Time Is On My Side
by MollyCarpenter
Summary: Turns out, when a human dies in Purgatory there are consequences.


They were halfway to the ledge when Cas stumbled to one knee.

Dean threw a glance at the swirling portal, but it didn't change. He stopped and turned, skidding back down the slope to Cas's side. "Come on, damnit," he snarled, grabbing for a hand to haul Cas back to his feet.

Cas looked up and his eyes snapped away from Dean's face to something that must have been behind him, and they went wide and terrified as he exclaimed, "Dean!"

And then pain lanced through Dean's chest like lightning from the overcast sky, and he looked down in distant surprise to see a blade protruding from just below his breastbone. He could _feel_ the jagged edge shredding his heart with every beat.

_Oh shit_, Dean thought, even as he looked back up to meet Cas's frantic eyes again. He tried to say _Go. Cas, go_, but, though his lips moved, there wasn't any air to force through his throat. The edges of his vision began to draw in with frightening speed, and he had just enough time to see the change in Cas's expression, from open devastation to a stony rage that Dean had seen last four years ago in a dark alley, pinned to the dirty bricks by hands like iron. His last coherent thought was, _Wow, someone pissed off the nerd angel_, and then the darkness closed in and Dean fell into it.

* * *

_Later, he will not remember this._

_The voice is huge, and there is nowhere to hide from it. __**Dean**__, it says, __**do you know the purpose of Purgatory?**_

_**It's where the monsters go**__, Dean replies._

_The voice says, __**Yes, but that is not its purpose. Purgatory is for the expiation of sins**__._

_Dean has never been much for fancy language, but he knows that word; you don't spend six years hanging around an angel without finding out what "expiation of sins" means. __**That's Hell**__, he says._

_**Hell is punishment**__, the voice says, patiently. __**Purgatory is redemption**__._

_**Bang-up job**__, Dean says, thinking of the endless fighting, and then he winces, because the voice probably doesn't want to listen to Dean Winchester mouthing off._

_But it doesn't sound angry when it replies, __**Not all of them wish to be redeemed. But you do, don't you?**_

_Dean bites back an automatic negative—redemption was always Sammy's gig, Dean does what he has to—and thinks it over. __**Yeah**__, he says finally._

_**Then think of your sin**__, the voice says, and Dean thinks it sounds approving._

_**Which one?**__ he asks, a little desperately, but there isn't any reply, and darkness takes him again._

* * *

Dean's eyes flew open and he gasped and clutched at his chest with both hands-and nearly stabbed himself in the neck doing it. The blade was only about the size of a steak knife but it was wickedly sharp, and Dean knew it as well as he knew his own face. Alastair had given him many tools, but this knife had been the first and the one most often used. He stared at it, even as the sounds around him began to register: wind, and fire, and voices screaming, and Dean could smell the ash and blood. "No," he said, hearing the edge of panic in his own voice, and dropped the knife, and tried to back away from the soul bound to the rack before him. He'd never learned who she was, had never wanted to know.

"I'm not sure I heard that correctly," a voice hissed in his ear even as hard hands fell on his shoulders and yanked him around.

Dean stared at the blood-covered floor. He didn't want to look; he recognized that voice, could never have forgotten it, but if he didn't look maybe it wouldn't be _real_.

"None of that, now," in a tone of false geniality that made Dean's stomach twist. "I thought we had an understanding, Dean. I thought you'd come to your senses." One gnarled hand entered Dean's field of vision and settled under his chin, nudging it up. Dean shuddered hard once, set his jaw, and met Alastair's misshapen eyes squarely.

"Guess I'm just not that smart," he said, and he would never understand how he managed to produce a smirk, but he did it, and it was worth the effort for the disbelief that crossed Alastair's face.

It didn't take the demon long to regroup; it never had. But Dean hugged that moment of surprise to himself, trying to weave it into a shield. He was going to need one. "No," he said again, louder this time. "I won't do it. I'm not gonna cut someone just to save my own sorry ass." He crossed his arms over his chest in a bravado even he knew was false. But it didn't have to be real.

Alastair's fingers tapped under his chin thoughtfully. "This isn't going to save her, Dean. It'll just be both of you instead." The demon grinned at him, too wide, full of teeth.

"Maybe I can't stop her getting cut," Dean said. "But I can make sure it ain't me cuttin'. Now are we doing this or not?"

Alastair's grin broadened, but there was an edge of fury under it that made Dean want to cry...and he knew he would eventually, but he couldn't afford to care. The hand under his chin twisted until it was closing over Dean's throat, choking. "We're doing this," Alastair said, and slammed Dean backwards into cold metal.

* * *

He was surprised to find that it wasn't, quite, as terrible as he remembered it. He screamed, sure, screamed himself hoarse and then mute; Alastair enjoyed the screams and there was no point in egging him to try _harder._ And Dean did not have the spare energy to be stoic; he needed to keep every bit he had for the daily denial.

But two things had broken him, the first time around: that no one who could hear him cared, and that it would _never stop_—that it didn't matter how long it took him to break, that Alastair had all the time in the world. And the second one, at least, had been a lie. All he needed to do was hold on until Cas could get to him.

Dean didn't know why he was so sure it hadn't all been a dream. It seemed like the kind of thing a desperate man would come up with; angels, really? Angels to the rescue of Dean Winchester, who swore and killed and drank and had a new girl every night? But he was certain, certain in every breaking bone, that it had all happened, and maybe it was because of the sheer dickishness of the angels—Dean thought that fantasy angels would have been much nicer than they'd actually turned out to be.

All of them except Cas.

He never said the name aloud. He screamed as much as Alastair could want, but he never said _Castiel_, no matter how much he wanted to. And he never, never hinted that he knew there'd be an end.

And he kept saying no.

* * *

Castiel was not tired. The siege had been long and the fight down to the walls of the Pit longer, but angels do not grow tired as they fight the Lord's battles. However, in private thoughts, Castiel would admit to being _weary_. It was remarkably unpleasant to hear the screams of the Righteous Man, and they could all hear him.

"I am impressed," Hester said, in a rare quiet moment between skirmishes. "I had thought he would have broken by now."

"Clearly his resolve is greater than we thought," said Uriel, wings at an angle that suggested a degree of dissatisfaction. It was an open secret that Uriel didn't approve of humans, and likely would have welcomed another opportunity to point out that they were weak.

"We should be glad," Castiel said, a little sharp. "If he breaks, it's the beginning of the end. I only pray he can resist a little longer. It would be a great pity for him to fail now, with rescue so close." Hester and Uriel made gestures of agreement. They were not quite ready for the last push, but it wouldn't be long. The rest of them, all that were left, would assault the final gates directly; it was straightforward, agressive, and exactly what the Hordes of Hell expected of them.

And Castiel, meanwhile, would take advantage of the confusion to slip past the wardens of the Pit and carry the Righteous Man away. There had been a great deal of argument on that point, with various members of the garrison claiming that, as head, Castiel should not take a position of such danger, but they had given in when it became clear that the decision was made. They were all obedient soldiers.

Castiel just wanted this to be over—to never have to hear again the ragged edge of the Righteous Man's voice as he pleaded for mercy he knew would not come. Every moment they dawdled was another moment of his torment. Alastair would have made sure he had no hope of rescue, and Castiel feared that the lack would break him before they could reach him.

A twitch of a wing and they all came alert.

* * *

In the end, it was surprisingly easy to evade attention; Hell's forces were too occupied with the garrison's attack to notice Castiel, Grace tamped painfully down as far as it would go, ghosting past the last few barriers.

The Righteous Man was choking on his own blood when Castiel laid eyes upon him at last, close enough that stealth was of no further use. It was a blessed relief to flare out again in a blaze of Grace that chased away the shadows of the Pit. And then Castiel saw the Righteous Man look up and, in defiance of all logic, begin to laugh, the sound rough and garbled and for all that somehow utterly sincere. A _human_ laugh, in this place where humans only screamed.

The torture-master faltered where he stood. Castiel dared not be drawn into a fight; Alastair was powerful, and this place was the very heart of his power. But the mere fact of Castiel's presence, unexpected, had set the demon off-balance enough that Castiel could sweep him aside to alight next to the rack where the Righteous Man was bound.

"Fear not," Castiel said, watching the man's eyes widen. "I am your deliverance, Dean Winchester." His bonds melting at a touch, the Righteous Man fell into Castiel's waiting arms. It was the work of a moment to convince the soul that it was not harmed, less difficult than the task of rebuilding the body would be, when the time came. Angels understood souls, akin as they were to Grace.

Castiel did not have time to allow the Righteous Man to collect himself, not with Alastair so close, so it was not until they were in flight that the human was composed enough to say, "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"

Castiel looked down to see him smiling, startlingly bright. The question still made no sense, however, and Castiel groped for a reply.

The smile widened a little and the Righteous Man said, "Never mind. Do you need me to do anything?"

"Trust me," Castiel said.

* * *

Dean was trying very hard to think of this angel as Castiel, because if he started expecting _Cas_ he had a feeling things wouldn't go well; Cas had been a total uptight dick the first few times they met. But he'd managed to get one small concession out of Castiel, which had confirmed that it hadn't been thoughtlessness that had led to having to dig out of his own goddamn grave the first time around. Cas had known Dean would be able to make it; it just hadn't occurred to him that a human might find it traumatic to have to burrow out of a fricking coffin.

So Dean took a second before he opened his eyes to just lie there in the dry grass, feeling the sun on his skin and breathing air that didn't smell like blood and burning. He wondered idly if it was going to be as bad this time, if he was going to wake stifling screams every night for months; he remembered Castiel, and somehow that seemed like it helped. Most everything was still hazy anyway. He'd taken a couple of weeks to fully regain his memory last time, and he never had remembered his rescue at all.

Finally he decided it was time to get his ass in gear and blinked his eyes open, squinting against the late morning light. He sat up and looked around.

The trees surrounding the rough grave were laid flat, as if Dean sat at Ground Zero. Even knowing what had caused it, it was still pretty fricking creepy. He wiped a hand over his mouth and shook his head. "You just ain't a subtle guy, huh Cas?" he muttered, and climbed to his feet. Might as well start walking.

* * *

Dean actually stopped in his tracks, thunderstruck, when it occurred to him that _Bobby wasn't dead_. It wasn't going to do any good to call him, but Dean was all of maybe eight hours' drive from the old guy. Though that did raise a question: Bobby first, or should he just go straight to Sam? Assuming it was the same day, Dean remembered the name of the motel Sam and Ruby had been in, and crap, Ruby wasn't dead either, the doublecrossing bitch. But that could wait.

He wasn't really in the mood to drive all the frickin' way to Sioux Falls and then all the way right back to Pontiac, but in the end what decided him was that he just didn't want to leave Sam in suspense for the extra eighteen hours. If it was the same day, he was going to just go stake out the motel and wait.

As he started walking again Dean slipped his right hand under the neck of his t-shirt. The skin of his left shoulder was irritated from the fabric rubbing against it and when his fingers hit the right spot it flared painfully. Dean sucked his lower lip into his mouth. The scar was back, the handprint scar that Cas had removed when he healed Dean after Stull. He didn't remember Castiel touching him there with any of his hands, but Castiel hadn't really touched his _body_ anyway, so what did it matter? It was some kind of weird angel thing.

The day was sunny and warm and by the time the gas station hove into view Dean was painfully thirsty—though at least this time he hadn't tried to inhale any dirt. He was pleased to see that the ancient Monterey was there; while it wasn't proof it was the same day it raised his hopes.

There wasn't any sign of movement as he approached the station, and it didn't look like the lights were on inside. As he crunched across the gravel lot, Dean wondered why the place was shut up in the middle of the day like this. Not that it was exactly a happenin' joint; just like last time, he hadn't seen a single car on the road.

At the door he bent and put a hand to the glass to shade his eyes. The coolers glowed in the back but the overhead lights were off and there was no one behind the counter. Dean grinned. Just in case, he banged on the glass for a few seconds, but no one showed up to ask what the hell he was doing.

He broke the window, unlatched the lock and pounced on the newspaper rack as soon as he was inside. _September 18, 2008_, the paper read, and Dean muttered, "Yahtzee." That established, he dropped the paper and went for the coolers.

* * *

An hour later, settled in a comfy corner behind the counter, Dean frowned. He could've _sworn_ it hadn't been more than twenty minutes or so after he hit the gas station that Cas had tried talking to him the first time, and most of that had been taken up with washing the dirt out of his hair—which he hadn't had to do this time around, so where was Castiel? He didn't want to start driving and get hit with angel-voice at sixty-five MPH. But he didn't dare stay here much longer either, in case the clerk came back and found him raiding the place.

He bit off a piece of his beef jerky irritably and chewed it while he thought. Cas hadn't known Dean couldn't understand him, so Castiel wouldn't either—might even be more likely to make the mistake, because Dean had talked to him as they fled, and he didn't know if he'd had the guts for that the first time. But Castiel would have to show up at some point with his speech about _gripped you tight_ and _deserve to be saved_ (and maybe Dean did, this time) and _have_ _work for you_—and Dean stopped chewing, the remaining jerky halfway to his mouth, because _they didn't_.

Holy shit, they didn't have work for him. There weren't any seals to be saved. The Witnesses weren't going to be rising, there'd be no captured Reapers, none of it. Castiel wasn't trying to talk to him because he didn't need to. Even that Jimmy guy was perfectly safe.

Dean had to lean his head back against the wall and freak out for a few minutes.

* * *

The Monterey was just as easy to hotwire as Dean remembered. He wasn't actually crystal clear on which way Pontiac proper and Sam's hotel was from here; last time he'd been busy going north and west to get to Bobby's. But it wouldn't be hard to figure out and he had plenty of gas. Once he was on the road he sank into the familiar haze of driving, just enough of his conscious mind paying attention that he'd react if a deer jumped out into the road or something.

Dean had noticed, the first time he'd done this, that his Hell-memories were not the same as his living memories. They should have been the only thing he could remember, ten years—this time—of Alastair wiping away everything else. Even Sam should have been only the faintest of suggestions in the back of his mind. But that wasn't how it worked, and he had no idea why, unless it was because his actual body hadn't been to Hell. Hell was all in his soul, and during the day it was pretty easy to ignore unless something reminded him. At night it was different, but Dean shoved that aside with the ease of long practice.

His last memory _before_ Hell was Purgatory, and that seemed like something that had happened only a few hours ago, running for the portal with Cas beside him and Benny hitching a ride, and Dean had no idea what had happened to Benny when Dean had gotten his ass stabbed, but he had a feeling that where the vampire was _now_ was still in Purgatory, years before Dean's own accidental arrival.

And Benny was going to have to stay there.

Purgatory, the Leviathans, Dean just couldn't risk it—the souls, and Jesus, what if that dick Zachariah got wind of it? The souls had made _Cas _into a raving nutjob even before the Leviathans took over, and Dean just didn't want to think about what, say, Michael would be like with that kind of power. So no trying to crack Purgatory for the sake of one guy, buddy or no buddy.

He was gonna have to tell Sam and Bobby something. He had no idea how much of the truth they'd be willing to buy, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem; the first seal hadn't broken, so it wasn't like he had to keep it too secret. And hey, they could even probably save some people because he knew in advance where to look. And also, Chuck. Dean was going to have to go and talk to Chuck...carefully.

* * *

Dean found the Astoria Hotel with a minimum of driving around and cursing. It had been a couple years, even above ground, but the place was kind of stuck in his memory. His baby wasn't in the lot. He parked the Monterey in a tow zone and wiped down the wheel and gear stick and door handles. A stolen car had about the useful life of a doughnut anyway; he didn't intend to come back to it and if he put it somewhere the cops would see it the owner would get it back sooner. Granted, the Monterey had gone from new to ancient without ever hitting cool; it was still in good enough shape that someone had to be taking care of it, and Dean was not going to come between that someone and their car.

The problem was that Sam had picked a place a little nicer than their usual, and the check-in desk was far enough into the lobby that Dean, spinning a story for the clerk about his buddy who might have checked in under a fake name because he was working a divorce case, didn't hear the growl of the engine. He caught the doors opening behind him, but the first he realized there was a problem was Sam's voice, cold and flat, saying, "You are going to _regret this."_

Dean stopped in the middle of a sentence, leaning on the counter. The hotel clerk's professional smile froze on her face as she stared over Dean's shoulder, probably at his enormous little brother doing his wrath-of-God impression. Dean eased his hands out slowly until they were visible, and visibly empty, and straightened just as slowly.

"Just get a room, Sam," he said, forcing his voice to stay calm. He looked over his shoulder. "I swear to God it's me."

Dean had forgotten how damn bad Sam had looked, that first night. It wasn't even physical, really; Sam wasn't too pale or skinny or even unshaved. He just looked _beaten_, though maybe it was just that Dean knew him well enough to see the signs.

He made a point of blatantly checking Ruby out when she followed Sam into the lobby, for absolutely no reason other than to piss her off; there would be time for telling Sam that Dean knew who she was when Sam believed who _Dean_ was. Just like last time, she caught on quick and played along with Sam's brush-off.

They maintained chill silence all the way up to the room. Dean led the way without being told to, careful to keep his hands at his sides; he had no doubt at all that Sam was just itching for an excuse, and he really didn't feel like dying again right now, thanks. He and Sam had maybe gotten kinda casual about the whole dying thing by the time Dean went to Purgatory, but there was no guarantee the angels would be interested in putting him back in his meat suit if Sam freaked out and stabbed him, and Dean wasn't in the mood for Memorex Heaven anytime soon.

He unlocked the door of room 207—he was pretty sure it was the same room as last time—and stepped inside, bracing himself. Sam kicked the door closed and was on Dean in a rush, shoving him face-first into the wall next to the bathroom door. Dean didn't try to fight it, even when he felt the edge of a knife against his throat. He had no idea where Sam had been keeping the blade, which was pretty impressive.

"You have ten seconds," Sam gritted in his ear.

"You need a silver knife and holy water, unless you wanna do the whole exorcism," Dean said. He wasn't surprised when Sam said savagely, "That sounds like a great idea, _Dean_. Say it with me, huh?_ Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus_—"

He went through the whole thing. Dean could feel him getting more and more confused; by the time he finished the final _audi nos _his hands were starting to shake. "Get me the silver knife," Dean said, trying to stay calm. "Your knife, so you know it's real silver."

Sam didn't speak for a second, and when he did his voice sounded suspiciously thick. "Don't move," he said. Dean would have nodded but the knife was still there, so instead he said, "I'm gonna roll up my sleeve, but that's all, OK?"

There was another long pause before Sam said, "Fine." The knife eased away from Dean's throat and then Sam moved back. Dean inched out from the wall just enough to get his hands together so he could roll up his sleeve. Behind him he could hear Sam moving, making rummaging noises, and with just about anyone else it would've made the back of his neck itch, but he had a hard time, even now, convincing himself that Sam was someone he needed to keep an eye on.

He turned his head to get a glimpse of Sam just as Sam straightened, holding the little silver blade by the sheath. He crossed the space between them in three long strides, drawing the knife as he came, and reversed it to hand it over Dean's shoulder, handle-first. Dean braced his left arm against the wall, palm out, and drew the blade across his forearm, carefully away from all the big blood vessels. The thin pain made him suck air through his teeth but he did it slowly enough that Sam could see it clearly. Then he wiped the blade off and held it up so Sam could take it back.

Except Sam didn't, and there was a very long silence. Dean cocked his head again, trying to get a good look, but it was Sam's voice that registered first.

"Dean?" Sam said, sounding so tiny.

"It's me, Sammy," Dean said, risking the nickname now. He turned, and by the time he had his back to the wall Sam's eyes were beginning to spill over.

"Dean, oh God," Sam said, and Dean let the silver knife drop without paying attention to where it landed as he lunged forward to wrap his arms around his brother.

Dean had read somewhere, or maybe Sam had told him, that if you wanted to bring up memories for someone, smell was the best way to do it. Maybe that was true, because standing there smelling Sam's stupidly expensive shampoo, Dean was gut-punched with a sudden memory of kneeling in the mud in Cold Oak, Sam's body leaning heavy and limp against him. He shuddered, and Sam's arms tightened.

"I tried," Sam whispered. "I tried everything, Dean, I swear I did, but—"

"I know you did, Sammy," Dean said, and gave his brother a last squeeze before he backed off, his hands on Sam's shoulders. "We're gonna have to talk about that, but later, OK?"

Sam nodded. "How—how did you…"

"I had help," Dean said. "And it was bigger mojo than you could have pulled off, so don't think you messed anything up."

Sam nodded again, and sniffled, and ran his hands over his face, blinking. "But you…" Sam started, and trailed off. Dean raised his eyebrows. Sam took a deep breath and continued, "What was it like?"

Dean opened his mouth to lie, say he didn't remember, but the words wouldn't come. He looked down so he wouldn't have to see the stricken expression cover Sam's face and said, "It was bad. But not as bad as it coulda been."

Silence filled the room. Dean could hear the traffic outside, faint. He didn't know what to say. The quiet stretched between them until finally Sam said, "You know you can talk to me about it."

"Dude, I don't do talking," Dean said. He looked up and forced a smirk. "You oughta know that."

Sam's face went through a series of contortions before settling on reluctant amusement. Dean was perfectly aware that wasn't the end of it, not by a long shot, but he didn't care.

"Yeah, I know," Sam said. "Look, here, you...you probably want this back." He reached under the collar of his shirt and pulled out a leather cord, and it took until the pendant emerged for Dean to remember exactly what necklace Sam was wearing. He froze, and Sam paused with the amulet extended between them, the little bronze head dangling in the air. "I...kept it for you," Sam said, like he was afraid Dean was going to be pissed he'd been wearing it. Dean stared at it. _It burns hot in God's presence_, Cas said in his head, and then _It's worthless_. Dean remembered the hollow sound of the amulet hitting the bottom of the trash can, but he also remembered Sam, eight years old, handing him the package. He ran his hand over his lips.

"Thanks, Sammy," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse, and took the amulet. When he put it on, the weight against his breastbone felt familiar.

* * *

The rest of the day was kind of awkward. Sam kept falling into acting like Dean wasn't there, and then being startled when he was. Dean remembered the behavior pretty well from last time, and also the time with Gabriel in Florida with the repeated dying, and _holy crap, Gabriel_. Because what Dean was _not_ remembering was how he'd gotten from Purgatory to Hell, no matter how hard he tried, and, well, messing with time was kind of an angel thing.

Though angel time travel meant you couldn't change things, and he'd changed plenty already, so who knew? Still, it was probably a good idea to try and get in touch with good ol' Gabe.

Maybe Dean could see about trying that out while Sammy was out spending the evening with his demon.

In the meantime, Dean said, "Hey, we should go to Bobby's," and waited out Sam's tiny jump of startlement.

"Uh, yeah," Sam said. "Maybe we should call him first? Not sure we want to just spring this on him."

Dean clicked his tongue. "Don't know about that. If I call him, he's gonna think it's a prank or something, and if you call him, well, picture that for a second. 'Hey, Bobby, guess who just showed up?' You think he'll take that well?"

Sam made a face. "OK, point. At least if you're right there he can check you himself."

* * *

They didn't have everything Dean would've needed to summon Gabriel, and once he thought about it he decided he didn't want to try praying without some holy oil to keep from getting his ass immediately smote, so when Sam snuck out in the middle of the night Dean stayed in bed and pretended to be more asleep than he was. Plenty of time for confronting Sam about Ruby when he had Bobby for backup and the panic room handy. Dean lay in the dark for a while before drifting off.

At first the dream was harmless, the usual nonsense blend of events, but after a while Dean realized that he was somewhere dark that smelled like burning, and fear gripped him. He looked down at his hands. The knife gleamed in light that didn't hit anything else, and it hovered over someone's skin. Unbroken skin; he hadn't cut her yet. But he was going to. He could feel it.

Behind him Alastair's voice hissed, "Now, Dean, or it's back on the rack for you. This isn't your coffee break."

His hands moved and Dean couldn't stop them. The soul's eyes were wide and she whimpered around the rag stuffed in her mouth. He couldn't stop, he was going to do it and the seal would break and it would all start again, where was Cas, he _couldn't stop, _he needed Cas, needed Cas, needed—

"Cas!" Dean yelled, and he was halfway out of bed before the shape looming over him registered. Still mostly asleep, Dean swung at it and missed as it yanked its head back out of his range, and he overbalanced and fell. He was fighting the blankets when he finally woke up enough to recognize Sam's voice.

"Dean, wake up!" Sam said, and there was an edge to it that Dean knew and hated; that was the voice Sam used when he was right on the verge of panic. Paradoxically it helped Dean get a grip, because freaking out wasn't going to make Sam any calmer.

For a few seconds they just stayed where they were, Dean sprawled beside his bed and Sam standing over him, both of them breathing too hard. Dean got a hand free finally and scrubbed it over his face. "Sorry," he said. "Bad dream." He hitched himself up to lean against the bedside table as Sam drew a long, shuddering breath.

"Don't apologize," Sam said, with impressive calm. "You want a hand up?"

"In a minute," Dean said.

Sam nodded and dropped down to sit on his bed. "Who's Cas?"

Dean froze for just a second, but it was a logical question; now he just had to decide how to answer it. Sam waited patiently while he assembled his thoughts. "Cas...Castiel," he said finally. "Cas pulled me out, Sammy."

Even in the light that spilled from the open bathroom door, Dean could see Sam's eyes narrowing. "Castiel," he said. "That's...not a person's name, is it?"

Dean shrugged and said, "Well, I mean, he can talk to you and all, but human, no, not so much."

Sam thought it over for a little longer. "Casti_el_," he repeated, the least bit of emphasis on the final syllable. "That sounds like...Dean, that's an _angel's_ name."

"Yeah," Dean said simply. Sam just blinked at him for a second, until he shrugged again. "I told you it was big mojo."

"An angel rescued you from Hell," said Sam, sounding like he expected Dean to break and start laughing any second.

"Yes," Dean said.

"...holy shit," said Sam, breathless as if he'd been punched. Dean had a flash of hilarity that he shoved down ruthlessly, because Sam hardly ever cursed but now was not the time to crack up.

"Interesting choice of words there, Sammy," he said.

Sam snorted a laugh, but sobered quickly and said, "Dean, I don't...but...an angel? I mean, an _angel_?" Sam packed a whole lot of stuff into that one word, starting with _I thought we didn't believe in angels_ and going right on through to _Why would an angel rescue __**you**__?_

"Right there with you, dude, but they had reason," Dean said. "There's a...thing. I mean I'll tell you all about it, but I'm gonna have to go back over it with Bobby, so I'd kinda rather wait."

Sam blew out a breath and said, "I, OK, that's fair. I need to get some, uh, some more sleep, are you…?"

"I'll be good," Dean said, pretending he hadn't noticed the slip.

* * *

Dean had almost forgotten the mp3 player that Sam had installed in his baby. The conversation went exactly like last time, as well as he could remember, which was almost enough to make him laugh. Sam handed over the keys with an air of ceremony that made Dean have to look away for a couple seconds and settled into the shotgun seat like he was coming home, and they drove.

The thing about an eight-hour road trip is, you can't maintain absolute silence for all of it. Even when you're a brat who's trying to kill his father with the sheer power of his sulking, which had happened more than once in Sam's teenage angst period. As it was, they fell back into their usual pattern pretty much instantly, and Dean would have been amazed if he didn't remember the same thing happening the first time around. The only moments of awkward were when Sam made comments that should have led into Dean telling him about how he got out of Hell, and even those weren't too awkward because all he had to say was, "Waiting for Bobby" and Sam would nod and change topics. He clearly wasn't _trying_ to milk Dean for the info, it was just on his mind, which was fair enough. It was kinda on Dean's mind too.

It was weirding him out that he remembered being rescued this time. Cas had not looked anything like Jimmy in Hell, for one thing. He hadn't really looked much like a person at all. Demons usually looked like humans—twisted, warped humans, but they still had a body and a head and arms and legs. Cas…well, he had arms at least. Dean wasn't quite sure how many, because he hadn't been in any shape to count. There were at least four wings, too. And Cas's voice had rung like bells and trumpets, which was apparently OK when Dean was a soul and not a body.

They hit the Sioux Falls area in the late afternoon and switched off so Sam could drive the last few miles. For once Sam didn't drive like an old man in a hat, making good time to the turn-off for Singer Salvage. He pulled up near the house with the driver's side angled to the porch and tapped his fingers on the wheel nervously.

"Let him say hi first," Dean said. "He's probably gonna be pissed at you."

"I did kind of take off," Sam replied, hunching his shoulders.

Dean shrugged. "We'll deal. Just give him a sec before you drop the bomb, is all."

Sam nodded and climbed out of the car. A moment later the house door opened and Bobby stepped onto the porch.

Dean hadn't expected to actually choke up, but he did. It was one thing to know in his head that Bobby was alive; it was another thing to _see _him. _Jesus, it's a good thing I didn't go back far enough that Dad's still around_, he thought, and wiped his eyes surreptitiously.

Sam and Bobby's conversation wasn't loud enough for him to hear through the closed windows, but he could follow pretty well by watching their body language: Bobby called Sam an idjit, Sam explained how he had to go feel all his feelings alone but did not mention the demon he was boning, they hugged, and then Bobby asked who was in the car. Sam braced himself and made a beckoning gesture.

Dean knew a cue when he saw one; he just hoped he could deal with this without actually tearing up in front of Bobby. He shoved open the door and climbed out, thinking as he went that he was getting tired of having to remember to keep his hands where his friends could see them.

He could see the exact moment Bobby recognized him. There was a second or two of stunned silence, and then the old man snapped, "Sam, what the hell is going on?"

"Bobby," Dean said, and the name caught in his throat; he had to stop and clear it before he could go on. "You gotta check me yourself, I know that, but...it's me, OK?"

Stepping into Bobby's house was like a slap to the face but Dean thought he managed not to show it. Proving he was human went about like the first time, with less attempted stabbing; Bobby took some convincing, but his own holy water and silver did the trick eventually. Of course, once he let Dean out of the bone-crushing hug, he turned to Sam and demanded, "What in _hell_ did you do?"

Sam hunched his shoulders and ducked his head, doing a great job of looking like a guy who'd sold his soul or something equally drastic. Bobby's face clouded over and Dean said quickly, "It wasn't him."

"Forgive me for being suspicious of your claim," Bobby said. "You're good, Dean, but you ain't good enough to claw your way out of Hell on your own."

Dean manufactured a smile and said, "I didn't. I had help. But it wasn't Sam."

Bobby studied him for a long moment and then sighed. "Lemme get the whiskey," he said.

Dean had kind of forgotten how crowded Bobby's main room had been before they rearranged to let him get around in the wheelchair; even the old horsehair sofa wasn't in there. Bobby sat behind his desk and Sam hitched one hip up onto the edge of it; Dean leaned against the wall next to the kitchen arch so they could both see his face. "Sam already knows a little of this," he said. "Just a little though, because I didn't want to have to do it twice." Sam did a pretty good job of hiding the flinch; Bobby's expression just got a hair more stony.

Dean sighed. "Look, I'm not gonna...the only thing you need to know about Hell is, when you're there, every day, they make you an offer." He swallowed and looked up at the ceiling, at the elaborate devil's trap. "They...at the end of the day, you get a choice. You can stay where you are, or you can get down off the rack. But if you do, you have to do to someone else what the demons were doing to you."

Sam smothered a wounded noise. Bobby took a breath and then said, "No one could blame you for—"

"I didn't," Dean said. He sipped from his glass, letting the burn roll over his tongue for a second. "I didn't. But I woulda."

They chewed on that. Bobby looked like he didn't like the taste of it. "You don't know that," Sam protested.

"I do know," Dean said, "because this isn't the first time I've done this and last time, I said yes."

Admitting it didn't sting as much as he expected it to, maybe just because this time he was talking about something that wouldn't ever happen anywhere but his memories. This time he'd been strong enough.

"Last time?" Bobby asked, but Dean was watching Sam. Sam was the one who was gonna get it if either of them would, and sure enough his brother's eyes were narrowing in thought. "You mean you're repeating," Sam said slowly. He sat up a little straighter, looking worried and pissed off. "Like...Dean, is this the Trickster?"

"I don't know," Dean said. "It was a couple years from now, and...something got me. Something killed me. And I woke up back in Hell, right before." He drank the rest of his whiskey in one long pull. "But this time, I knew what would happen if I did it, so I didn't, and then I just had to wait for Cas to come and get me."

There was a pause. Bobby thumped his own glass down on his desk blotter hard enough that it sloshed and Sam jumped. "Dean, goddammit, you keep sayin' things that bring up more questions than they answer," the old man growled. "Do you really expect us to believe you're from the future?"

"I can prove it," Dean said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the list he'd written, walking it over to the desk to hand to Bobby, who took it cautiously. "That's the next couple months, all the stuff that won't change. I might've gotten the order wrong a couple places." He pointed at Bobby with the hand he wasn't leaning on and said, "You speak Japanese. You told Sam about it while I had ghost sickness."

"Ghost sickness," Sam repeated.

"It's on the list."

Sam looked at Bobby, who said something that Dean could've _sworn_ ended in "Chewbacca". Sam rolled his eyes and said, "OK, you do. Showoff." Bobby looked smug for a second, but then his face drifted back into its usual scowl. He said, "Who's Cas and why did he come and get you? More to the point, _how_ did he come and get you? People can't just walk into the hot box and airlift the souls out."

"People can't," Dean agreed.

"And this Cas ain't a person?"

Dean took a breath and met Bobby's eyes squarely. "He's an angel."

Bobby just looked back, his eyebrows raised. After a second he said, "OK, and?"

"That's all you got, _and_?" Dean said. "I say _angel_, you say _and?_"

Bobby picked up his glass and waved around the room with it. "You know how many of these books mention angels? More than mention oni, and I got a whole section on oni. Nothing human dragged your ass outta Hell, Dean, and nothing I ever heard of. So yeah: You say _angel_, I say _and._ Specifically, and why would an angel do that?"

Dean snorted and said, "Because they're _dicks_." He reached over and took Sam's glass, ignoring the _Hey!_ it got him—wasn't like Sam was drinking anyway—and knocked back half of it. "OK. So, the first time I did this, I...it wasn't right away, OK? But eventually. And as soon as I did, there was a prophecy." He wanted to close his eyes, but settled for looking at the ceiling like he had to remember the exact words, like they weren't burned into his brain in Alastair's singsong voice. He wished it was dark, but the setting sun stabbed through the kitchen window. "The first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in Hell."

"A righteous man?" Sam repeated softly. The words fell into the dusty air of Bobby's house like stones.

Dean waved his hand. "Yeah, I know, but it's a thing. I'm the righteous man, whatever, just go with it."

"Actually I was thinking that was a pretty good description," said Sam. Dean eyed him skeptically and Sam shrugged.

"And I'm gonna guess that this seal is on something we don't want opening," Bobby said, after a pause that lasted a beat too long.

"Yeah," Dean replied. "Yeah, see, in Hell there's a cage. A cage for the Big Bad himself. And trust me, if he gets out, the world is going to suck." He smiled. "Apocalypse for everyone."

"Apocalypse?" Sam said.

"Everything but the plague of locusts," Dean told him. "Famine, Pestilence, War and Death. And here's the kicker: _the angels knew_. They knew what would happen if the first seal broke. They wanted it to happen."

Sam's forehead wrinkled and he said, "The angels, the _angels_, wanted the Apocalypse? Dean, that's—"

"I know, Sam," Dean said. "They're all upset because God's not around to tell them what to do anymore and they think the end of the world would be better. They wanted their big cage fight, the Devil versus the archangel Michael, so they could have some nice Stepford paradise when it was over."

"But they rescued you," Bobby said.

Dean snorted. "Yeah, well, they had to have me topside. So they made sure that the rescue didn't get there fast enough, I guess. Only reason I managed to hold out this time was because I knew about the prophecy, and the, I dunno, the footsoldier types, they don't know about the plan so once they were on their way they just kept comin'."

"Dean," Bobby said in a tone of heavy patience, "why do you have to be alive?" Sam gave the old man a scandalized look and Bobby shrugged at him. "I ain't sayin' I'm not glad."

"Angels need vessels," Dean said. "They can't walk around on Earth and do stuff without them. I'm a vessel. So's Sam. We both had to be alive so we could say yes, let our angels wear us to the prom."

"What good would two more footsoldiers be in the Apocalypse?" Sam asked. He had a look on his face that Dean knew and usually thought was hilarious, where he was basically just rolling with the latest theory no matter how out there it was.

"Come on, Sam, you think we're that lucky?" Dean asked sourly. "We aren't just any vessels." Sam and Bobby stared at him. He sighed. How had that asshole Gabriel put it? "Look. God's gone—on vacation or on a bender or just not pickin' up his phone, whatever, he's not up there giving orders. But Michael, he's sticking with what he thinks God wants. And Lucifer isn't happy with that, never has been." He took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling again. Sam wasn't going to like this and Dean knew it damn well, but it was better to get it said quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. "Last thing Michael knows, his dad told him to look out for his little brother and if he couldn't save him...any of this starting to sound like a story you heard somewhere else yet?"

Bobby twigged first, weirdly enough, because he hadn't been around for a bunch of those conversations, but maybe Sam just didn't _want _to get it. But when Bobby's eyes went wide in shock—again—Sam looked at him and then at Dean and said flatly, "You're telling us that you and I are the vessels of the Archangel Michael, and the Devil. Respectively."

"If that means I'm Mikey and you're...not, yeah," Dean said. He knew what "respectively" meant, but sometimes Sam needed a distraction and Dean being a dick almost always worked. He shrugged one shoulder, and waiting for Sam to snort and roll his eyes almost made him miss his brother's actual reaction. Sam was all but grinding his teeth and he blew out through his nose as he stood up. Straight.

That was _always _a bad sign. Sam only did that when he was seeing red. "Let me make sure I have this right," Sam said, barely able to unclench his jaw enough to talk. Dean was beginning to be worried. He had expected Sam would be depressed, and having guessed so wrong made him feel off-balance. "You were rescued from Hell by angels so that you could be the vessel for the Archangel Michael, so that you could fight _me_. The vessel for _Lucifer_." Sam's hands were in fists and he was _right there_, leaning into Dean's space in a way that would have been scary if Dean hadn't changed his diapers, once upon a time.

"Uh, well, not anymore?" Dean said cautiously. He hadn't thought he was being _that _much of a dick. "Not this time. I mean the first seal didn't break? So no rumble in the jungle."

"And the first seal didn't break because you were so strong," Sam snarled. He was vibrating with tension. Dean set the glass carefully on the desk, just in case Sam was planning to jump him, which frankly was looking more likely by the second.

"Not the first time," Dean said. "I couldn't have...you beat the Devil, Sammy, just long enough. You jumped, OK? And the only reason I didn't go out and get myself killed is because you made me promise I wouldn't." He could hear his voice getting rougher and for once he didn't try to stop it. "And still, if I hadn't known Cas was coming, I dunno how long I coulda held out, OK?"

"Right, I forgot," said Sam viciously. "You have a _nickname_ for an _angel_. You know what, Dean, I am so _sick_—"

"Sam," Bobby said. It wasn't loud, but it cut across the beginning of the rant like a knife. "You think maybe you want to go take a walk for a few minutes?" It was pretty clearly not an actual question.

Sam breathed out hard. "Fine," he said, and turned on his heel. He didn't stomp, exactly, but it wouldn't have taken Dean's level of knowledge to see the rage in the set of his shoulders. Brooding and pensive they were not.

He didn't slam the door, though.

Once Sam was out of earshot, Dean sighed. "That could have gone better," he said, and picked up Sam's glass again to finish what was left in it.

"He's had a rough couple of months," Bobby said as Dean swallowed. Dean leaned over and ticked his finger against one of the bottles sitting on the desk—the one that Bobby had not had to get out of the cupboard—and said, "Looks to me like he wasn't the only one."

Bobby glared at him. "You my momma now?" Dean shrugged, because he'd just wanted to make sure Bobby knew that he knew. The old man sighed. "We had to bury you, Dean. I mean, I wanted you salted and burned but Sam wouldn't have it."

"I think Cas could've dealt with it," Dean said. Since he didn't look like a "Thriller" reject and all, clearly there'd been some reconstruction.

"Yeah, well, Sam didn't know that. He said you were gonna need a body when you got back home, and that's about all he said."

Dean nodded encouragingly.

"He was quiet, real quiet. And then he took off. Whatever he needed, I wasn't it." Bobby looked up from his whiskey to meet Dean's eyes. "Four months now he ain't had anybody, so maybe you wanna cut him a little slack."

Dean looked back at him, feeling blindsided, because all of a sudden he understood why Sam was so pissed. He shook his head and said, "That's the thing, Bobby, he did have somebody. And it wasn't anybody good."

"What are you talking about, boy?"

"Look, did you have a free weekend lately?" Dean asked.

* * *

"Dean," Sam said awkwardly, "really, I'm sorry. I just…"

Dean stopped with one foot on the basement floor and twisted to look up the steps at his brother. "How many times I gotta tell you, apology frickin' accepted. Now come on, this is awesome."

And it was, too, though Dean admitted he was having to sort of channel himself from six years ago, when he first found out about it. He took a couple of steps towards the door, waving his arm as he went. "He's got a fan set up and everything. It's sweet."

Once Sam was over the threshold, Dean moved to the side to let him drift into the center of the panic room. Sam was looking up at the fan with its superimposed pentacle in the grating, and didn't notice Dean easing back out the door until the scraping hinges drew his attention.

"Dean, what—" was all Sam had time for before Dean was slamming the door and throwing the latch. Alone it wouldn't hold Sam for long, but it didn't have to.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam asked, bewildered.

As he fished the padlock out of his pocket Dean looked up to meet his brother's eyes, where confusion was shading quickly into anger. "Ruby's playing you. I know it for a fact," he said. Sam blinked at him, his train of thought clearly derailed. "Detox is gonna suck, Sammy, I'm not gonna lie, but it won't kill you. While you're out of it I have some research to do, find out if we can afford to kill Lilith or if we have to let her live." Dean clicked the padlock shut and turned his back on the panic room door.

"Dean, let me out," Sam demanded behind him. Dean ignored it and started up the steps. "Dean!"

* * *

Later it would occur to him to be glad that he'd decided to leave the house for an hour or two, give Sam time to get the yelling out of his system, but when the whine first started all Dean could think was, _Damnit, no!_ He clapped his hands over his ears—not that it was going to help a whole lot—and turned his back on the nearest junker with an intact windshield just in case it took Castiel a second to get the message.

"I don't understand you," he said loudly. The whine built, like the worst feedback ever, and he raised his voice as it started to hurt. "Castiel, I can't understand you. I'm dealing with Sam, you don't have to worry, ah fuck Cas _I can't understand you_—"

All around him car windows burst and chunks of safety glass pattered down on his hair and clothes like he stood in the center of a hailstorm. Pain spiked through his head and he staggered.

"_You don't need to do this," _Dean shouted, unable to hear his own voice, and he was digging the heels of his hands uselessly into his ears when the unintelligible shriek cut off like someone had flipped a switch.

He wobbled over to a Ford with no transmission and leaned on it for just a second to get his balance back. "Son of a bitch," he muttered, and took off for the house at a dead run.

Sam was shouting steadily from the panic room when Dean burst through the door and skidded to a stop in the living room. Bobby looked up from his desk and said, "Are you sure about this? Because—"

"If a dude with blue eyes and a trenchcoat shows up, don't try to get in his way," Dean said. "Or a big black guy in a nice suit, or a guy who looks like a used car salesman, or...that ought to be about it, but if they show up, you just tell them where I am, got it?"

Bobby put his pen down. "What are you talking about?" he said, in a tone that implied Dean was losing his grip. Dean wasn't actually sure that was wrong, either. There was _no goddamn reason_ for Castiel to be talking to him. The seal was _safe_.

"The angel who got me out, he just tried to talk to me."

"_Tried_ to?"

"Yeah, they...if they don't take vessels, they'll burn your eyes out, break your eardrums, so I'm trying to tell you what the vessels look like so if you see those people you know to not piss them off, OK?"

"And in the meantime," Bobby said with a huff, "we're keeping your brother prisoner in _my basement_ so he can detox from demon blood."

"Yes!" Dean shouted, suddenly furious. He slammed his hands down on the desk and Bobby jerked back in his chair. "And I'll tell you what else, when that bitch Ruby comes looking we are gonna _kill_ her because I am not letting Sam jump into Hell again, and if you don't like it you can _fuck off!_"

They stared at each other for a couple of seconds, Dean trying not to breathe hard, and finally Bobby said calmly, "I don't know where you get the idea that I don't want to help you, Dean, but I have to say it ain't flattering."

Dean breathed out and felt his shoulders slump. He rubbed his hand over his face and muttered, "Sorry."

Bobby didn't say anything for a few seconds. "How long we gotta leave him down there?"

Sometimes Dean kind of loved it when people ignored his apologies. "Till he stops shouting and starts screaming, and then...four, five days? Depends on how juiced up he is. Might be less."

"I knew I shoulda soundproofed that room," Bobby grumbled.

Dean laughed because it was either that or scream.

* * *

He didn't bother asking Sam for help when he took him his dinner, and managed not to rise to the bait when Sam snapped at him. Dean didn't even really blame Sam for being pissed off, but he wasn't going to let that stop him. He couldn't afford to.

He knew which books to go for first from watching Sam do it last time, so Dean settled down for some hard-core researching that evening. Bobby had long since hauled himself off to bed when the light in the ceiling flickered. Dean looked up from the text he was wading through—as far as he could tell, the translator had heard the original Enochian through a windstorm and hadn't been great with Latin, so every word was iffy—and felt his eyes narrow.

A second later the house shook like it had been grabbed by a giant hand, and Dean smothered the urge to curse. He marked his place in the book and hurried over to the front door, because Bobby was going to be pissed if Cas broke the latch.

Dean flung the door open just as Castiel set his foot on the first step. The moon was just past full, and even with the yard lights off Dean could see him. He'd had his mouth open to say something smart-assed, but the sight of Castiel struck him speechless; Dean's last memory of Cas was the ragged, filthy refugee in scrubs and a tattered coat, and now...it suddenly wasn't hard to remember how fucking freaked he'd been, watching this guy come strolling past all their wards and symbols like they didn't even exist. His coat was still (again) too big but the angel practically shimmered with power, like heat rising over tarmac in the summer, and somehow the fact that he was two steps lower didn't change the impression that he was looming over Dean.

Castiel looked straight at him, and even in the half-dark Dean could see how blue his eyes were—Jimmy's eyes, that poor bastard, looked like he wasn't getting out of vessel duty after all. He was even wearing the same suit.

Dean realized he was gaping like a fish and closed his mouth, but he didn't manage to say anything. Castiel seemed to take it in stride, because after a second he said, "Don't be afraid, Dean. I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition."

"Cas," Dean croaked. "_Castiel_."

"Yes," Castiel said. He came up the steps and stopped, just inside Dean's personal space. Dean couldn't decide if he wanted to step back or not, because having Cas stand too close was familiar and familiar made him feel better but at the same time this _wasn't_ Cas. The angel just stood there, waiting. Dean was pretty sure he'd be willing to wait all night.

"What're you doing here?" Dean asked, when he could make his mouth make words.

"We need to talk, Dean," Castiel said seriously.

"About what?" Dean knew the worry was making him sound pissed off but he couldn't help it. "Did I forget to say thank you? Because, thank you. But I'm topside now. What do you need me for?"

"We have work for you," Castiel said, and Dean's heart froze in his chest.

* * *

Castiel watched in mild alarm as the blood drained from Dean's face. It seemed an excessive response to the statement, but Castiel had never before met a human who'd spent time in Hell without being transformed; perhaps his nerve had broken after all.

Dean swallowed. "What kind of work?" he asked unsteadily.

"The work you already do," Castiel said, in an attempt to be reassuring. "All that will change is why you're doing it."

"You want to send us on jobs," Dean said.

Pleased, Castiel said, "Yes."

"Just—just regular jobs?" Dean asked, with an urgency Castiel didn't understand.

"Yes," he said again. "As...payment for your rescue." Castiel did not approve of that—they would have rescued Dean regardless, lest the first seal be broken. The untruth seemed a poor reward for the Righteous Man's strength, but Castiel's superior had told him that Dean would not obey unless he felt indebted, and Castiel understood enough to know that he did not understand everything about God's plan.

Dean didn't reply immediately; Castiel did not press, content to wait while the man recovered his composure.

Finally Dean said, "That what your boss told you to tell me?"

Castiel inclined his head in agreement, taken aback.

Dean sighed and ran his hand over his mouth. "That sounds about right," he said under his breath, and then looked up to meet Castiel's eyes again. "OK. Guess you guys can at least point us at the bad things faster. But we're out of commission for a week at least. Sam's...sick."

"You will have to monitor your brother's behavior closely, Dean," Castiel said. "He—"

"I know," Dean said. Castiel suppressed the flash of irritation at having been interrupted. "I know about Ruby. I'm dealing with it."

Castiel hoped he was adequately hiding his surprise; his superior had not told him that Dean had any inkling of his brother's unfortunate activities, and Castiel could not help but wonder, incredible as it seemed, if that was because Zachariah didn't _know_. "I'm glad to hear it," he said aloud. "If you don't stop it, we will have to."

Dean smiled and made a small huff of laughter, but Castiel didn't think he sounded honestly amused. "Yeah, sure, Cas. Castiel."

"I'll return in a week," Castiel said, and took flight.

* * *

Two days after Cas's visit, Sam stopped eating; eighteen hours after that, he complained of cramps. Dean nodded and said, "This is where it's gonna start to suck."

Sam, who had had a lot of practice when he was a teenager, managed to convey that he had rolled his eyes even though Dean couldn't see his face—he was pretzeled on the cot with his arms wrapped around his stomach. "Yeah, because being stuck in here hasn't sucked enough yet."

"Trust me, it'll get worse."

"That's really reassuring, Dean," said Sam.

"Just tellin' it like it is, Sammy," Dean said. He wanted to go in and at least help Sam drink something, but he didn't dare open the door yet; Sam was capable of moving through worse pain than this, and more than pissed enough for a sucker punch if he got a chance.

Sam snorted and curled up tighter, which Dean took as his walking papers for now. "I'll come check on you in a few hours," he said. He was not looking forward to listening to Sam go through withdrawal again, but it wasn't like he had a lot of choice.

He was heading for the upstairs bathroom when someone knocked on the door and he made a sharp turn to answer it. Bobby would have to deal with his customer in the garage but there was only so much hustling for grocery money Dean could do on his own. He pasted his best Charming Mechanic smile on his face and pulled the door open. "Hi, welcome to Singer Sal—" he said, and cut off short at the sight of Ruby standing on the porch, her eyes beetle-black. She smirked at his surprise and blinked them normal again.

Dean was so gobsmacked that he didn't think to protest as she pushed past him into the house, saying, "Wow, and here I thought you'd be happy to see me."

The casual sarcasm snapped Dean out of it and he growled, "Is there a reason I should be happy to see you, _Ruby_?"

She turned in the living room arch, her eyebrows climbing. "Sammy's been talking more than I thought he would," she said.

"Bros before hos," Dean drawled, deliberately offensive.

Ruby snorted at him. He shut the door and walked into the living room to sit behind Bobby's desk and waved at the nearer chair. "You have two minutes to tell me what the hell you want," he said.

Ruby walked past the near chair and sat in the far one, and Dean hid his own smirk. "Just need to talk to Sam," she said.

"Talking, is that what we're calling it these days?"

Ruby leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the edge of the desk. "Call it what you want," she said with a shrug. "I kept Sam from going off the deep end while you were enjoying your summer vacation, Dean, so maybe you should try to be less of a dick." She looked him up and down, her eyes narrowing, and went on, "I gotta say you're looking pretty human for a guy who spent forty years with Alastair."

Dean knew she had to be disappointed, but she hid it well. He rested his arms on the desk. "What can I say? He just wasn't all that, you know?"

"I _know _that's bull," Ruby retorted. "Alastair's the master."

Dean shrugged one shoulder. After a second, Ruby said, "Anyway, where's Sam?"

"Basement," Dean said, and waved one hand at the hallway in the direction of the stairs. Ruby kicked her feet back down to the floor and stood, but hesitated. "They're saying it was angels," she said. Dean looked up—not very far up, her meatsuit wasn't tall—and said nothing. "Think I'm gonna make this a quick visit," she said, and took a step towards the hall.

And came up short against the edge of the devil's trap.

"What the hell?" she said, shooting a look at Dean. He grinned and pointed at the ceiling.

As shock gave way to anger on her face, he said, "You're here for as long as we want you, sweetheart."

* * *

Bobby came in about twenty minutes later to ask why there was a Mustang outside. He wasn't happy at the news that they had another guest, but he didn't argue. They took her out to the garage and dumped her in the unused chest freezer—after Dean Sharpied a binding link onto her skin because he did not want to have to deal with tracking her down if she smoked out. Once that was done, the two of them went back into the house.

"Wasn't she helping you out?" Bobby asked, sitting down behind his desk. He ran his eyes over the books Dean was using with his usual expression of checking to make sure Dean hadn't screwed them up.

Dean dropped into the chair Ruby hadn't used and tipped his head back. "Yeah, no, she never really wanted to stop me going to Hell. It was just a way to get to Sam."

"Get to Sam for what?" Bobby sounded like he'd never heard more bullshit in his life, which was how Dean liked it since they were talking about Ruby.

"Doesn't matter now," Dean said. "It was all part of the crap with the seals, and since we're not worried about the seals, we don't have to care." Bobby opened his mouth to complain. Dean rolled his eyes. "If you're that interested I'll tell you all about it, but you're gonna have to help me look something up."

* * *

Dean had a very quick description for the next several days: they _sucked_. Sam's Happy Fun Withdrawal Time really got into gear a couple hours after they stowed Ruby. So any time he was in the house, he could hear Sam screaming.

Every few hours Sam would wind down and Dean would go and help him drink some water. The breaks never lasted long, fifteen minutes at best, but it was enough to make sure Sam wasn't going to dry out. You could kill yourself pretty fast not drinking, and faster when you were sweating like a pig, which Sam was.

He had to leave whenever Sam slipped back under because he couldn't deal with listening to Sam begging him to make it stop. Maybe it was weak—Dean was pretty sure it was weak—but he just couldn't fucking take it, not this close to Hell.

He was in the attic clearing the clutter and pretending that the floors between him and the basement muffled all the sound when Bobby called up the stairs, "Dean, get your ass down here."

Dean dropped the box he was holding and ran; he'd thought he could see the light at the end of the tunnel but from the sound of Bobby's voice something had gone seriously wrong with Sam. He thundered down the stairs to the ground floor to find Bobby standing behind his desk with a cautious look on his face and one hand in the desk drawer. Without turning in Dean's direction, Bobby said, "You told me not to get in his way," and waved the hand that wasn't on his gun.

Exactly in the middle of the free area of the floor was Castiel. He didn't seem to care that Bobby wasn't even trying to hide how suspicious he was, but then again given that this was Cas it was pretty possible he just hadn't noticed.

"Hello, Dean," Castiel said. Dean did his best to not shiver.

"Jesus, Bobby, I thought something was wrong with Sam," he said.

The old man shrugged and said, "All of a sudden a guy shows up in my house, forgive me for bein' a little unsettled."

Dean huffed and nodded. "Yeah, OK. Bobby, this is Castiel. He got me out." He remembered just in time that he shouldn't say "Cas".

Bobby looked Castiel up and down. Castiel still didn't react, other than nodding agreement when Dean said his name. After a couple of seconds Bobby shoved the drawer closed and came out from behind the desk. He stopped in front of Castiel and extended his right hand. Castiel stared at it like he had no idea what to do with it, and Dean was kind of pleased that it hadn't just been Sam that time.

After a beat Bobby said, "You don't shake hands?"

"Ah," Castiel said, and took Bobby's hand.

"Thank you for saving Dean," Bobby said as they shook.

"God commanded it," Castiel said, and then tilted his head to the side. It was so familiar Dean wanted to scream. "But you're welcome."

"God?" Bobby asked. He shot a glance at Dean.

"My superiors would never have ordered such a thing if Dean were not necessary to God's plan. We are saddened when a man sells himself to Hell, but we can't interfere," Castiel said, with the straight-faced sincerity that Dean had never managed to get used to. It had taken him years to figure out that Cas just _said stuff_ like that. He thought sometimes that that was why they'd spent so much time fighting, the year Cas was working with Crowley: because he'd been able to tell that Cas was holding something back on him.

This Cas, though, was never going to have to make that deal, not if Dean had anything to say about it.

"Sam's still not on his feet," Dean said. "Gonna be a couple days yet."

Castiel looked like he didn't approve of that answer. Dean had a hard time feeling upset about that; it wasn't Cas's fault that Zach (Dean was betting it was Zach, this "payment for your rescue" schtick had Zach's greasy fingerprints all over it) was using him as a messenger boy, but that didn't mean Dean had to play along. "I have news of a great evil," Castiel said.

Bobby blinked at him and then at Dean, who shrugged. "I'm not going after the angel definition of 'great evil' by myself and Sam's in no shape to go with me," he said. "Sorry, but I'm not going anywhere till Sam's back on his feet."

Castiel was about to argue—Dean knew the look—when Bobby said, "Now hold on just a second, what's goin' on?"

"It's no big deal, Bobby," Dean said. "The angels are gonna give me heads-up about stuff going down, that's all. They get good intel, you know?" Bobby's eyebrows went up in a way that meant there was going to be a _conversation _about this later, but he didn't say anything.

"In two days, then," Castiel said.

"More likely three, maybe four," Dean said, and Castiel frowned.

"'A couple' means two."

Dean tried not to laugh, but he was pretty sure he was doing a crappy job. "It's not literal, dude." He thought about it for a second. "Hey, before you go, I have a question." Instead of prompting him like a normal person Castiel just waited. Dean had forgotten how weird that was. "Can you fix a rugaru?" Dean asked.

* * *

It actually was only two days later that Sam was good enough to leave the panic room, though Dean was giving him at least 36 more hours before he'd be willing to take the kid on a hunt.

Of course, Sam's reaction to the news about Ruby wasn't exactly what Dean thought of as restful.

"She was _helping_ me, Dean!" Sam shouted.

"Helping you how?" Dean snapped back. "By getting you hooked on her blood? Her fricking _blood_, Sammy!"

"It was the only way," Sam said, and Dean rolled his eyes.

"She only wants Lilith dead because it'll let Lucifer out," he said. "She played you for two years. Ever notice how she never actually did anything to keep me out of Hell, Sam? There's a reason for that. She only likes you because you're the key to the Devil—or you woulda been."

"Damn it, Dean," Sam said, his voice dangerously low. They were in the living room again, Bobby sitting at his desk, but this time he didn't seem to be making any moves to interfere in the fight.

"Do you think I can't prove it?" Dean asked.

"Telling us what you think you saw in the future isn't proving anything!" Sam exclaimed, waving his arms.

"What I think I saw? Am I lyin' or delusional, Sam? You gotta pick one."

Sam just stared at him, his nostrils flaring.

Bobby said, "As it so happens, we don't have to rely on Dean's word here." Sam turned, and Bobby shrugged. "We got a spell we can try on her, make her speak the truth. Couldn't do it if she was a real girl, but her body was dead anyway, right?"

"Persistent vegetative state," Sam said.

"Right, my point is, there's no soul in there to get tangled up in the spell. This stuff don't work on people with souls, at least that's what the spell says."

"Fine," Sam said tightly. He turned to glare at Dean again. "And when she tells us she was trying to help, you are going to let me do what I have to do, Dean, so help me."

* * *

It took about an hour to draw the spell diagram on the garage floor, mostly because Sam insisted that it be absolutely perfect so that Dean wouldn't be able to claim that the spell hadn't worked. Dean shrugged and let him do it, because as far as he was concerned it meant _Sam_ wouldn't be able to deny that Ruby was out to get him.

They had Ruby in the middle of the circle with more sigils on her throat and forehead when Dean caught the familiar sound of fluttering wings and turned to see Castiel standing near the wall. He looked like he was ready to smite something.

"What are you doing?" he growled, and yeah, that was definitely the smiting voice.

_Shit_, Dean thought, as everyone else realized there was an extra person in the room. Bobby jumped, but relaxed when he saw who it was; Ruby's eyes went wide and black and she scrambled out of her chair to press her back against the far side of her trap. And Sam, apparently thinking that a civilian had stumbled into the garage, straightened up from checking one of the lines on the floor and said, "Sir, this isn't what it looks like."

"Good," said Castiel, taking an ominous step forward. "Because it looks like you're trying to open a gate to Hell."

"What?" Bobby barked. Sam looked confused as it dawned on him that the nerdy dude in the trenchcoat was not actually looking to get his car tuned up. Castiel took another step—towards Ruby, and much as Dean hated to do it he moved between them.

"What are you talking about, Cas?" he asked.

"Cas?" Sam said. "This is Castiel?"

Castiel looked past Dean's shoulder and demanded, "What do you hope to accomplish here, demon?"

Ruby started to stutter out some kind of denial, and that was when Bobby decided to chime in with, "Gate to Hell is not what it says, damn it—" and everyone was suddenly talking at once, and Dean squeezed his eyes shut for a second before he shouted, "_Shut up!"_ in his best Dad voice.

Amazingly, they all did, even Cas.

Dean took a breath. "OK. Sam. Yeah, this is Castiel, you can be a fanboy later. Bobby, we will deal with your book in a second. Castiel, the demon's not accomplishing anything, we're trying to make her tell us what's really going on, that's what the spell's supposed to do."

"No, it isn't," Castiel said, sounding a tiny bit less like he was going to kill something any second. He turned his head to meet Dean's eyes. "That may be what it's supposed to appear to do, though. I want to see the text."

For a second nobody moved, then Bobby snapped, "I've had that book for seventeen years!" He stomped over to where the sheet of ancient parchment sat on a toolbox and grabbed it like it had personally pissed him off, and shoved it at Cas. "Right there," he said, stabbing his finger down at the spell diagram. "See? _Veritas larvarum_, that is nothing to do with gates."

Castiel studied the page solemnly. After a second he frowned. "I see," he said at last. "I'm sorry, but this spell is a trap."

Bobby glared at the angel. Dean was kind of impressed.

"The annotation," Castiel said. "It's in Chinese, and it says—"

"I can read kanji," Bobby said stubbornly.

Castiel frowned harder and replied, "They're hanzi."

Bobby rolled his eyes. "You know damn well what I mean."

"Yes," said Castiel patiently, "but you're still wrong."

"OK, whoa," Dean said, before Bobby could say something that would get him smote. "No offense, Bobby, but I think I'm gonna trust the angel over some old spell you didn't even know was in the back of your book till a day ago, OK?" Now that he thought about it, it was a little suspicious how they'd found the thing in the first place, and he could see Bobby coming to the same conclusion, eyeing the parchment like he expected it to attack.

"That's great," Sam said, sounding disgusted. "I mean, thank you for stopping us, seriously, but now we have no way to settle this!"

"Sam Winchester," Castiel said, and Dean could see the exact moment when Sam remembered that this was an actual angel he was talking to here. "The boy with the demon blood."

Sam stammered, "No, I, uh…" and trailed off.

Castiel waited a polite few seconds to see if Sam was going to manage a complete sentence before he said, "I'm glad to see you've ceased your extracurricular activities." Sam nodded, speechless.

"Sam's got a point," said Bobby. "The whole point was to get girlie here to tell us the truth. I ain't got any other spells that can do that, nothing even close."

"No spell can. Demons are beings of lies," Castiel said.

"Well, crap," Dean said. He looked at Sam, who was looking back, and knew that his brother's dismayed expression matched his own.

"Spells can't do it," said Castiel, slowly. "But I can."

"You can what?" Dean demanded.

"I can force her to speak the truth," Castiel said, and paused to think it over. "That is, she won't be forced to speak, but if she speaks it will be the truth."

Dean felt like he was losing blood, that weird swimmy feeling that happened right before you passed out. "You can...you can just make a demon tell you the truth," he said, thinking of Alastair, pouring the salt down his throat and making him choke and gag. He was staring at Castiel but he caught Sam moving out of the corner of his eye, moving like he was setting to catch Dean if he went down. Dean took an unsteady step towards Castiel. "So if you had a demon, one who knew something you needed to know, you could just _make him_ tell you. You could just, just _wave your hand_ and he'd have to _tell you the truth_." He took another step. Castiel was watching him with a very puzzled look on his face, and Dean wondered if Cas'd bother to turn with the blow this time or if he was about to break his fingers on the angel's jaw. He remembered his hands, moving over Alastair's skin. He hadn't had _his_ knife, but the one Cas and that bastard Uriel had supplied had been sharp enough.

And then Sam was beside him, taking him by the arm, muttering, "What the hell, Dean?" Dean thought about trying to shake him off but then Bobby showed up on his other side.

"It would depend on the demon," Castiel said. "This one is not very powerful."

Dean stared. Castiel looked calmly back at him. "So you couldn't...not a really strong demon. Not—" He couldn't make himself say the name, not with Sam and Bobby right there.

"I'm not an archangel," Castiel said.

Dean felt himself wilt. Sam didn't get any less tense, but that was because he knew all of Dean's tricks and was waiting to see if he was faking. Dean shoved his hand back through his hair and said, "OK, fine, what do you need?"

"Nothing," Castiel said. He turned and marched into the spell circle. Ruby was still up against the very edge of her trap, and Dean didn't have to be able to see her pupils to know she was staring at the angel in terror. Served her right, because even if Cas didn't just smite her he was gonna make her tell the truth. Castiel took her by the arm with one hand and an expression of disgust crossed his face. "I won't be able to maintain this for long," he said, laid his free hand across her throat, and closed his eyes. For a second, nothing happened; Dean was just about to glance at Sam uncertainly when Castiel drew a sharp breath and Ruby went tense as a wire. "Ask your questions," Castiel said, in a voice that sounded even more like ground glass than usual. There was angel-light leaking around the edges of his fingers.

"Tell us why you were helping us," Sam said.

"No!" Ruby exclaimed. "No, this isn't fair, Sam! I was _there_ for you, you can't let him do this to me!"

"He isn't doing anything," Sam said.

"What the hell do you know?" she said angrily. "You'll never kill Lilith without me, so make him let me go."

"We're mere mortals," Dean said. "Why do you think we can make the angel do anything?"

"_Screw_ you," she spat.

"Ruby," Sam said, pleading. "Dean just needs to hear it. That's all. Just say it."

"All I was trying to do was help you, Sammy," Ruby said. The nickname in her mouth made Dean's teeth grind.

"Help me what?"

"Help you do what you have to. Come on."

Castiel's face was starting to show the strain and Dean racked his brain, trying to think of a question she couldn't dodge, a question even Sam couldn't weasel the meaning out of—but that was the problem. It had to be _specific_, and he couldn't afford to care that Castiel was going to hear this.

"Tellya what, sweetheart," Dean said. Ruby's eyes, still black, seemed to move from Sam to him. "Repeat after me, and I swear on my mother's grave that we'll let you walk out of here. Say 'I don't want Lucifer to get out of the Cage'."

Even through the concentration Dean could see Castiel's surprise, but the angel didn't say anything.

Ruby opened her mouth.

And closed it again.

"No?" Dean said. "How about 'I wasn't trying to get Sam ready to break the last seal'? Is that one too hard for you? Here's an easy one: 'I really tried to stop Dean from going to Hell'."

"Say it," Sam said softly. "Ruby, please say it."

There was a long pause. Castiel's hand on her throat was visibly shaking.

"I can't," Ruby said. Dean didn't have to glance at Sam to know the expression that was crossing his face. He knew _exactly_ what Sam looked like when this piece of news hit him.

"You can let her go," Sam said, his voice completely toneless. Castiel hesitated only a second before he released Ruby and stood back, and Dean thought that he looked drained, but he didn't have time to worry about it because Ruby was still talking even as she slumped. The print of Castiel's hand was burned across her throat.

"Sam," she said. "Sam, please, it's not too late. We can still do this. You and me. It has to be you, Sammy, you have to save us. You have to set him free. He's gonna be so grateful, he's gonna repay you in ways you can't even imagine, Sam—"

Later, Dean would realize that he actually heard the small scrape of noise as Sam picked up the knife—Ruby's own knife. Sam went across the spell circle in four quick strides, unsheathing the knife as he moved, and her last word cut off sharply as Sam swung the blade in a brutal arc and buried it in her solar plexus. She crumpled around the blow, looking up at Sam and mouthing his name, but Sam just watched as she flashed under her host's skin, burning away, and Dean felt a spike of savage pleasure to see it happen.

Sam didn't try to catch the body as it fell. He stood over it for a long few seconds before he sheathed the knife again and turned on his heel. "Looks like you were right, Dean," he said, in a colorless voice that Dean didn't like at all.

"Sam," he said, but his brother just set the knife back down on the toolbox as he passed.

Sam kept walking. "I need a few minutes." At the door he paused and looked back at Castiel. "Thank you for saving my brother," Sam said, and left, his shoulders hunched.

"Well hell," Bobby said, and sighed. "Guess I better get out the shovels."

* * *

Sam wasn't hard to find. He and Dean had picked the spot when they were kids, out on the edge of Bobby's property in the middle of a bunch of cars that were old and picked-over enough to not be disturbed. The tarp they'd stretched over the little clear space was even still there, though one corner had come down and drooped sadly. Dean had to stoop to get under it.

Sam sat there with his arms wrapped around his knees, looking about as small as he could, which wasn't very small but he was trying.

Dean held out one of the beers he was carrying, and after a second Sam uncoiled enough to take it. "You wanna go sit on the car for this?" Dean asked.

Sam made the kind of laugh that would have sounded more sincere if he'd just said "Ha ha" and been done with it. "I'm good here," he said.

Dean shrugged and sat down Indian-style, off to the side so he wasn't staring straight into Sam's face. He let Sam play with the beer bottle for a little while before he said, "I'm sorry, Sam."

"Sorry about what?" Sam asked. "Sorry I trusted a demon?" He sounded bitter.

"I'm sorry she was a lying bitch," Dean said. "I know why you trusted her, OK? She was there when I...couldn't be. I wish there'd been someone who deserved to have you trust her."

Sam shrugged, staring down at his bottle. "It's not news that my judgement sucks, Dean."

Dean took a swig of his beer, rolling his eyes. "Man, you were crazy, OK? I was in Hell and you thought you couldn't get me out. Everyone's judgement sucks when there's that kinda thing going on. I mean look at me—when _my_ brother died, I sold my soul." Sam didn't laugh.

"Yeah, well, I couldn't get you out, could I?" he said.

"It was Hell, Sam. Humans aren't supposed to deal with Hell."

"No, apparently that's the angel's job." Sam sighed. "I just...I trusted a demon, just because she was telling me what I wanted to hear. And meanwhile, you've got an angel, an actual angel. I don't know what to do with that."

"I told you, Sammy, the angels are dicks. I mean, Cas isn't, but the rest of them? Even Anna was the last time we saw her."

"Who's Anna?"

"Long story. Hopefully we'll never even meet her this time." Dean rolled his beer bottle between his hands. "Anyway you'll have plenty of time to get to know Cas. He's gonna send us on jobs."

At that Sam looked up. "What are you talking about?"

"His boss is, like, even more of a dick than most angels, and I think he's pissed that I didn't break the seal, so he's sending Cas to make us go clean up messes the angels don't want to get their hands dirty on. Told Cas to tell me it was to pay for being rescued, and that's crap but I figure it's not a huge deal. They can maybe get us on the right track before anything real bad goes down, right?"

Sam had that slightly awed look on his face that Dean remembered vividly. It had taken most of a year for that look to go away entirely. "We're going to be doing jobs for angels?"

Dean said, "Yeah, so get some sunglasses." He grinned and put on a Blues Brothers voice. "We're on a mission from God."

Sam, finally, laughed for real.

* * *

Sam went to bed early and Dean didn't try to stop him; he'd had a bad day and they were leaving in the morning. Bobby had dozed off watching TV a good hour earlier and Dean was thinking about hitting the hay himself when he turned away from the bathroom sink to find Castiel standing in the doorway.

"Damn it, I really am gonna put a bell on you one of these days," Dean snapped, startled.

"Listen to me," Castiel said, raising his hand. "You have to stop it."

"What? No—" Dean started, but then Castiel's fingers touched him and the world winked out.

He blinked his eyes open when the cop nudged him in the shoulder. "Move it, buddy, you can't sleep here," the officer said.

"Crap. Yeah, sorry," Dean said, and rolled around to sit up straight. He had a terrible sinking feeling in his stomach and he took a second to prop his head in his hands. The cop was watching him with professional caution. "I'm good," Dean said. "Rough night is all. I'll move on in a minute, OK, I just need to…" He couldn't think of any useful way to finish that sentence.

After a second the cop said, "You can get a cup of coffee at the diner."

"Trust me, buddy, coffee is not gonna fix my problems," Dean said grimly, but it wasn't like he had any better ideas. He pushed to his feet. "Coffee," he muttered, and headed for the diner.

Dean still found it hard to believe that John Winchester had _ever_ looked that young; his memories of his father started the night after the fire, and aside from the beard Dad hadn't changed much between then and his death. So when he settled onto the stool beside the young man—for fuck's sake, this guy was younger than _Dean_—it was with a wrenching sense of unreality. _Frickin' angels_, Dean thought.

He made a show of pulling out his wallet and checking it, and then hunting through his pockets for change. He dug up a couple of dimes and an old-fashioned quarter; the dates were all too recent but Dean doubted anyone was going to notice. The Sonny and Cher reject behind the counter took his order without comment.

Dean waited, nursing the coffee, until "Mister D" showed up and had his little chat, and then said, "Winchester?"

His father looked at him, and Dean hid the wince. "Yeah, that's me."

"John, right?" Dean said, forcing a smile. John nodded. "You're my cousin Mary's guy."

Even with everything, the way his father's face lit up at the mention of the name "Mary" made Dean's smile more real. "If you mean Mary Campbell, then yeah," John said.

Dean held out a hand and said, "I'm Dean, Dean van Halen. Nice to meet you." They shook.

"Well, I hope you've been hearing good stuff," John said. "I get the feeling Mary's dad doesn't like me very much."

Dean lowered his voice. "Just between you and me, Samuel's kind of the black sheep of the family. Don't worry too much." He figured it wasn't even a lie; since "the family" was pretty much him and Sam these days, their opinions were the ones that mattered and they'd both hated Samuel by the time he died.

"You in town to visit?" John asked, and Dean nodded. "Well, I can give you the fifty-cent tour if you don't mind a quick stop."

* * *

It wasn't any harder to talk John into buying the Impala this time around, and that made Dean feel a little better. Then there was some driving around, and then John offered him a lift to the Campbells', since he was heading that way anyhow. Dean waited out his mother's initial confusion about the change in car plans until she asked who he was. John gave her a smile and said, "I ran into your cousin in Jay Bird's." Dean climbed out of the car. Luckily, John was looking at him and not Mary when her expression went blank and cautious.

"Mary, long time no see," Dean said, as easily as he could manage. "I have some...family business to discuss." He could tell she caught the emphasis by the look of distaste.

"My father's inside," she said.

Dean shrugged. "Actually I needed to talk to you. Alone."

John frowned, looking back and forth between them. "Now wait a second," he started, but Mary cut him off with a hand on his arm.

"No, John, it'll be fine. We'll just walk down the street, it'll only be a few minutes." She glanced up and down the block and got up on her toes to kiss him. Dean looked away, because he knew they were in love but there were some things a guy didn't need to see.

Once they were down the sidewalk far enough to be out of earshot, Mary said, "You're a hunter?"

Dean said, "Yeah, but that's not the important part."

"I'm not interested in hunting," Mary said, and it wasn't hard to figure out where Sammy had gotten his stubborn streak.

"Well, tough, because it's interested in you," Dean said. "You and John need to get out of town. Today. Now."

Mary stopped walking. "What are you talking about?"

"Your family, you have a safe house somewhere?" Dean asked, stopping so he could face her. She nodded, still cautious. "Take him there. Something's gunning for you, Mary. Something big."

It took some convincing, but Mary was a hunter, raised to it just as much as Dean had been, and the fact that she didn't like it hadn't killed her ability to figure out when something was hinky. Then they had to go tell John, which went about as well as Dean would have expected, but protests about how his folks wouldn't like it if he just took off didn't override the fact that the man was pretty much stupid in love. Mary (in this context, Dean _really _preferred to think of her as _Mary_ , not _Mom_) finally got him to agree.

Then they had one more argument, John and Dean against Mary this time, about whether she was going to go back in the house and pack a bag. She was starting to make another Sam-face when John put both hands on her shoulders and said seriously, "Look, this is operational security. If your parents don't know you're leaving, they can't tell anyone who asks, OK? I don't like this, Mary, but if we're doing it I want to do it right. We can stop and buy toothbrushes on the way there."

Amazingly, this _worked_. Mary stared intently into John's eyes for a few seconds, and then sighed and nodded. "Then we should get going," she said. "My dad's going to start wondering why we're standing around out here, and the further we can get before they expect me back, the better."

John took her hand and kissed it. Dean tried not to look away too obviously. The two of them turned for the car, and got most of the way there before John paused and looked back over his shoulder. "Come on," he said, in a tone that Dean knew very well. He opened his mouth, thought for a second about trying to get out of it, and then took in the frown that was starting to build on John's face.

"Yes, sir," Dean said.

* * *

It was weird as hell sitting in the back of the Impala with his father driving, and made seriously weirder by Mary in shotgun. Dean had very hazy memories of riding in the car with his parents, his mother pregnant with Sam, but they were the kind of foggy that probably meant he was remembering more than one incident and just mashing them all together. Also he thought he'd been in the front seat too.

John was quiet while they drove to the store and Mary went in to buy toothbrushes, but Dean could see how tense he was; this guy might be a lot younger than Dean ever remembered his father being, but he hadn't changed _that _much, and it wasn't like "edgy and pissed off" was an unfamiliar state for his dad to be in. But John didn't say anything until they were on the state highway that Dean remembered from his second, Anna-induced trip to the past.

"All right," John said. "I've gone along with this because I trust you, Mary, but I think it's time you explain to me what's really going on."

"John," she started, and he shook his head.

"Damn it, don't _lie_ to me," John snapped. Dean didn't have to be able to see his face to imagine the expression on it. Mary looked indecisive and glanced into the back seat at Dean, who sighed and shrugged. He really hated giving the Truth Is Out There speech, and giving it to John—to _his father_—just made it worse.

Tense silence held for a few more seconds and then Mary sighed too. "You're not going to believe some of this," she said.

John took it about as well as Dean remembered from last time, which meant there was a whole lot of yelling. Mary gave as good as she got, though, and what finally made John calm down and start thinking was her bellowing at him, "Then you think I'm crazy, because _this is my life_!"

Dean stayed out of it as much as he could. Getting in the middle of couple fights was always a bad idea.

"Monsters," John said finally. "Monsters are real."

"Yes," Mary said. She was miserable, Dean could tell. "I'm sorry, I didn't know how—"

"And you fight them. Both of you. And your family."

"Yeah," Dean said, with a sense of _déjà vu_. And also, he was annoyed that he didn't have Sam around for backup this time.

"How long?" John demanded.

"All my life," Mary said.

Dean did not chime in, because he seemed to recall that that led to the most cliché threat ever and he just wasn't in the mood.

* * *

The place was in much better shape than it had been the first time Dean was there; the remaining Campbells must not have done a great job of keeping it maintained once Samuel and Deanna died. Mary certainly wouldn't have. There was even food in the kitchen-cans, mostly, but food.

There were two big rooms upstairs, each with six cots that Dean suspected of being Army surplus; apparently when the Campbells set up a safe house, they did it with a lot of people in mind. They screwed around for half an hour or so making beds, with blankets from the closets that smelled like mothballs and cedar enough to make Dean sneeze. Once that was done, they stood around for a few seconds staring at each other until Mary said, "I need you to tell me everything you know."

Dean made a face, but John and Mary were both staring at him with matching expressions. "There's not much I can tell you, really," he tried. "We're out of the line of fire now, it's not—"

"_Dean_," John said sharply.

"Right," Dean said.

It actually went really well at first; Dean stuck to the "demon that killed my parents" story and claimed that it liked to target hunters, which wasn't even really a lie. But then Mary started looking over the list of known contacts.

"Some of these dates are in the future," she said.

Dean shrugged and said, "My dad had dreams about the demon. It was freaky, but we didn't try to stop them because they were helpful." Mary frowned but seemed to accept it; John looked blatantly skeptical. And really, Dad would have gouged his own eyes out with a fork before he just accepted prophetic dreams.

Then Mary hissed in surprise, staring at the list. "Walsh—Liddy Walsh! She's a friend of mine!" She clapped the book shut as she stood. "We have to help her."

"What?" Dean said, in chorus with John.

"I'm not going to let a demon take Liddy," Mary insisted. She turned for the door, glancing back over her shoulder at them. "Come on, the sooner we get there the better."

They both started after her but John moved faster and caught up three steps from the door, catching her by the arm. Mary stopped walking, but she didn't look happy about it.

"Mary," John said, "we can't do this."

"We have to!" Mary said, and there was that Sam-stubborn look again.

Dean said, "We need to stay right here, where the demon can't get _you_."

John and Mary both glanced at him and then went right back to staring at each other, which was funny and also kind of insulting. The staring lasted long enough that it started to be uncomfortable before John said, "Please." Mary sighed and her shoulders drooped.

"All right," she said. "But I need to at least call my parents."

"Whoa, what? What if they trace the call?" Dean said.

John and Mary gave him identical puzzled looks before she said, "They're not the FBI, Dean."

Dean didn't have to hear the other half of the phone call to realize that Samuel was not happy with his daughter. Mary's part sounded a heck of a lot like some of Sam's arguments with their dad and Dean wasn't sure if that made him want to laugh or scream.

* * *

Mary went to bed early; John and Dean spent the evening playing poker with a battered deck of cards from the closet in the main room. Dean was a little surprised to win about three quarters of the time. Finally they went to bed too, in the other bunk room.

The next day felt like it lasted at least a week. Mary cooked breakfast in a pout that matched Sam's for epic, and basically refused to talk to either of them; John just sat around looking sad about it and Dean had no idea what else to do so he checked over the devil's traps drawn around the house. When he couldn't pretend to be accomplishing anything useful anymore he started playing Solitaire instead, annoyed by how inconvenient it was with actual cards.

He felt wrung out by the time he went to bed, but he hadn't actually done much physically, which was probably why the dream got him. He didn't know if he had the dreams every night, but when he was tired enough to sleep through them he at least didn't remember them much the next day.

It wasn't a particularly spectacular dream, just dark (but not quite dark enough that he couldn't catch hints of movement) and screaming all around him (but he could hear the stealthy sound of something sneaking up on him), and Dean was scared, because it didn't hurt yet but it would soon, any second now Alastair would be there and it would hurt and he didn't know how much longer he could take it and—

"Dean," someone said, from close by, and Dean pulled his eyes open with a gasp. At first he couldn't figure out where he was, but then he focused on his father, on John, crouching next to the cot and studying him with concern. John was making no effort to touch him. The window behind him was gray with the first hints of dawn.

"Shit," Dean said softly. He realized he was basically in the fetal position and took a second to swing around and sit up straight, scrubbing his hands over his face. "Sorry."

John got up to sit on his own cot, shrugging casually. "You didn't mention you were in country," he said.

Dean mustered a huff of a laugh. "Wasn't."

"Sure looked like it to me. Lots of guys have bad dreams after that."

"It wasn't combat," Dean said. "I was—some bad guys had me. For a long time." He sighed. "I'm still dealing with it."

John watched him in silence for a second before he said, "You want me to wake you up if it happens again?"

"If it's bugging you," Dean said. "Usually I wake up on my own."

John nodded and lay back down, and Dean was desperately grateful that he wasn't trying to talk about it.

He slept pretty well after that, waking to find John gone and his cot made with literally military precision. Dean got up and put his shirt and jeans back on, even though they were starting to get scummy. At least after this Yellow Eyes would be out of the area and Mary could safely go home. On his way to the steps he glanced into the other bunk room to see Mary's cot still occupied.

John was in the kitchen, frying eggs. "You like yours over easy, right?" he said as Dean came in behind him.

It was kind of weird, because Dean didn't remember his mother cooking for him much, but Dad making eggs? That had been a staple of his childhood. If Dad was home—wherever "home" happened to be that month—on a weekend, he made eggs for breakfast.

"Over easy, yeah, thanks," Dean said. "You better go wake Mary up."

"Those who sleep late don't get eggs," John said, sing-song and grinning.

"Yeah, you want her even more pissed?" Dean replied, though that sentence was a memory too.

John poked one of his eggs with the spatula and said, "You may have a point. All right, can you do this?"

"Yeah," Dean said, and had to clear his throat to continue, "My dad taught me."

John handed him the spatula and wandered out of the kitchen. Dean had just enough time to flip all the eggs in the pan before John yelled, "Dean!"

He didn't bother to move the pan to a cool burner, just let it drop and ran. He skidded around the corner into Mary's bunk room to find John standing at the window and Mary's cot full of a bundle of blankets.

"Shit," Dean said. Across the room John nodded.

"My car's gone," he said. "She must have pushed it down the road a little so we wouldn't hear the engine."

There was just enough of a slope away from the house that it was feasible for a single, non-weightlifter person to overcome the inertia—Dean loved his baby, but there was no denying she was a big girl—and Dean was sure he'd have woken if the Impala's engine had been anywhere close. "_Shit,_" he said again, with more feeling.

"Damnit, Mary," John said, sounding so much like _Damnit, Sam_ that Dean kinda expected to see the beard growing in spontaneously. "We're going to have to hitch to go after her, unless you know someone you can call."

"No, I…" Dean started, and then a thought struck him. "Uh. So, OK, I'm going to try something," he said. John gave him an extremely puzzled look. "It's gonna look weird but...if a dude shows up, don't worry about it."

"What?" John said.

Dean gave him a helpless shrug, tilted his head back and said, "Castiel, I need some help here, right now!" He waited. Nothing happened.

John gave him a good ten seconds but then he said, "Dean, what the _hell_ are you doing?"

"Just...give it a second," Dean said. "Castiel, I'm not kidding around here, I need to talk to you."

For once, Castiel did not appear right next to Dean; he was instead right next to John, who crumpled as Castiel's fingers touched his head.

But Castiel was looking at Dean, or maybe "glaring" was the right word, and even as John hit the floor he demanded, "What are you doing, Dean?"

"My mom just went after a demon by herself," Dean said. It occurred to him to hope that Cas hadn't been watching too carefully, but he didn't have time to worry about that right now. "Dad and I need to go help her."

"I can't interfere, Dean. You need to do this alone."

"I'm not asking you to fight any demons for me," Dean snapped. "I just need some frickin' transport, OK?"

Castiel's expression softened a notch. "I understand," he said. "But if this is how time is ordained—"

"No, she's going because of something I told her!" Dean said. "This is one of the places Yellow Eyes came, how did you guys not know about that?" Not that he believed for a second that they hadn't, but _Cas _didn't necessarily know. "It wouldn't have happened if I wasn't here, man, I have to fix this!"

After an agonizing but thankfully short pause, Castiel said, "I'll take you back to town."

Dean sighed in relief. "OK, cool, but I gotta make a stop first."

* * *

Outside of the cabin, Castiel said disapprovingly, "You realize, if you do alter the future, your father, you, Sam—you'll never become hunters. And all those people you saved, they'll die."

"I know that," Dean said. And this time he would get it right.

"And you don't care?"

"Of course I care," Dean said tightly. "But these are my parents, Cas." He barely even noticed the nickname. "I'm not gonna let them die again. And if they live, Sam gets to grow up playing Little League and chasing tail instead of boning demons and running for his fricking life. I have to do this."

Castiel didn't answer, but Dean thought his silence thawed a little.

The discussion with Elkins went pretty much like last time, and then Dean hurried back out to Castiel and the still-sleeping John, who Castiel was holding against his side like a toddler. If it had been anyone else, Dean would have thought it was cute. As soon as Dean was within arms' length Castiel reached out and touched him; Dean had no time to brace himself for the sickening stretch of angel transport. And when he came out of it, it took him a second to get his bearings again, so Castiel was well gone before Dean realized he and John were sitting on the bench that Dean had arrived at in the first place, two days ago.

"Crap!" Dean said, too loud.

Beside him, John stirred and his eyes opened. He looked confused for a few seconds but his expression cleared and he said, "Well, finally. Do you think that guy could have driven any slower?"

"Uh," Dean said intelligently as John stood up. He had no idea what John thought had happened except that it had apparently involved a car.

"Come on," John said. "We still have to get the rest of the way to Hayleyville."

They ended up hitching after all, rather than trying to borrow (John's idea) or steal (Dean's) a car; John claimed it would be easier to get back in the Impala and Dean just didn't have the energy to spare for arguing with him. So it was early afternoon by the time they trudged up the walk of the pleasant little house the Walshes lived in; the Impala was sitting on the curb and Dean couldn't resist running a covert hand over the car's flank as he passed. He was raising his hand to knock when the front door was yanked open from the inside.

"Dean," Mary said, smiling poisonously. "John. It's so nice of you two to come but Liddy needs some time with just friends right now—"

She didn't open the screen door to them. "Does your friend know?" Dean said, quietly.

Mary's face worked in irritation for a second before she said, "No. I'm going to draw devil's traps if I can get her to go lie down, but you can't be here."

John said, "We're here to help." Dean grimaced but he and John had talked about it and decided it was better to go along with this than try to keep Mary under wraps and have her get loose and be a wild card again.

"Do you know an exorcism?" Mary demanded.

"I have something better than an exorcism," Dean said, patting his jacket. "We don't have to settle for sending it back to Hell, we can _kill_ it."

Mary laughed. "You can't kill demons, Dean."

"I can."

Mary stared at him and repeated, "Do you know an exorcism?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Yes," he said.

The planning ran into a snag when Mary realized that Dean's idea for killing the demon meant its host was going to die too, and John backed her up on it. The three of them had a furious whispered argument in the kitchen of Liddy Walsh's house, trying not to wake either Liddy, who Mary had persuaded to lie down after all "just until Dr. Brown gets here", or her husband, who was half out of his mind from the morphine he was on anyway. Dean wasn't sure what kind of cancer the poor guy had, but it didn't sound like he was long for this world.

Finally Dean threw up his hands and agreed that he wouldn't just shoot the demon's host—they were assuming it was the doctor—but he was determined that the Colt was coming out if there was so much as a hint that Yellow Eyes was going to bust loose. He wrote out the version of the exorcism that he and Sam used, which Mary complained about on the grounds that the Latin as written didn't make a coherent narrative. Like Dean cared, any more than he did when Sam grumbled about the same issue; it _worked_, and that was the only important thing.

So they spent a half an hour or so drawing devil's traps everywhere they could think of, and then they settled down to wait. Mary sat on the couch and stewed; John sat next to her and tried to be soothing, though Dean was pretty sure that was because John still only half believed in all this supernatural stuff. Dean paced.

It was a relief, sort of, when the knock on the door came. Mary got up to answer it, doing a meek-little-woman act that Dean thought was equal parts impressive and creepy. The idea was that she'd get the fake doctor into one of the traps and then Dean would deal with him, and they were just going to have to hope that the doctor either wouldn't remember much or could be persuaded to keep his mouth shut.

And it all went really well, at first. Mary escorted Dr. Brown into the living room and then murmured something about getting Liddy up. Brown took a seat on the couch, which was directly under the lightly-pencilled trap on the ceiling—it had been a pain to draw in the textured plaster. As the man was settling back, Dean stepped into the room with his hand under his jacket, and said casually, "_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus_." The doctor looked up, his eyebrows climbing in surprise, as Dean went on, "_Omnis satantica potestas,_" and said, "Young man, what do you think you're…" But halfway through the sentence he seemed to run out of steam, and shrugged. Dean kept reciting, but by halfway through he had a definite bad feeling about the whole thing. "_Te rogamus, audi nos_," Dean finished.

Nothing happened.

"No, don't tell me, let me guess: you're a hunter," the demon drawled. He cocked his head, his eyes washing over with that sickly yellow.

"Binding link," Dean spat.

The demon grinned and said, "Right on."

"Fine," Dean said. "Then I'll make you a deal. You like deals, right?"

The demon spread his hands out. "Whatcha got, kid?"

"Smoke out of here and you get to live—for now." Dean drew the Colt and thumbed the hammer back. "But I gotta admit, I'd rather you didn't."

The demon looked very faintly surprised and his gaze settled on the Colt. "And where exactly did you get ahold of _that_?"

"Gonna count to three," Dean said. "And when you get out of that guy, you keep goin'. One."

The demon stood and took a step away from the couch but he ran into the edge of the trap immediately. "You'll have to break this, or I can't go anywhere," he said.

"Two," Dean said.

"Be seeing you," the demon said, smirking, and the smoke burst from the doctor's mouth. It swirled in the air like a stationary tornado as Dean pulled out a knife and flipped it at the ceiling; the throw wasn't great but it broke the line and the demon circled the room once and vanished out the open window.

"Three," Dean said, and sighed, and eased the hammer back down. "That was too easy," he muttered.

* * *

They dealt with the de-possessed doctor by giving him a drink and the quick-and-dirty rundown, which went better because he recognized Mary and John. Once he felt solid on his feet, they woke Liddy so she could talk to him, and then there was an hour or so of her crying on Mary's shoulder because her husband was dying—but at least Liddy's kid, if any, wasn't going to have a demon in its nursery. By the time they'd dealt with it all, it was getting close to dark.

The drive back to Lawrence proper was quiet. Dean was just hoping Cas would show up soon to take him back to where—when—he belonged.

As they neared Mary's house, Dean said, "Look, you guys can drop me off. I can, uh, get out of town on my own. With any luck you'll never see me again."

Castiel probably just didn't want to take him out of the Impala; that would be hard to explain away, even for a hunter.

"Are you sure?" Mary asked, but Dean didn't think she'd be sorry to see the last of him; he was a reminder of something she hated. He wondered what it was going to be like, growing up with a mother and grandparents—assuming Samuel didn't manage to get his ass killed at some point, but that wasn't Dean's problem.

John pulled over to the curb without a word and let the car idle. They were three or four blocks from Mary's house, and the neighborhood was quiet, the streetlights starting to come on.

"Thank you for your help with Liddy," Mary said.

"Yeah. It was nice meeting you both," Dean said.

"You too, kid," John said. Dean rolled his eyes, because seriously? But he climbed out of the car anyway. John rolled his window down and said, "Thank you. I don't know what I'd have done if anything happened to Mary."

_I do_, Dean thought, but out loud he said, "Take care of her, John."

He turned and walked before he could get stupidly sentimental, and after a second heard the growl of the Impala pulling away again.

He expected Castiel any second, but nothing happened. After a few blocks he stopped under a streetlight, thinking. It was still weird, seeing his dad as he'd been before. John had been so...and Dean sucked in air. _Kid_. Once John found out his name, he'd never been anything other than _Dean_. Not once _buddy_ or _pal_, and sure not _kid_.

"Son of a _bitch_," Dean said, and took off running back the way he'd come.

The Impala stood at the curb in front of Mary's house. Dean pounced on it, but a quick look was enough to tell him that all four doors were locked, and his car keys had not made the trip back with him; the Colt was out of reach unless he broke a window, and he'd be more likely to break his own hand if he tried. He'd intended to leave it for Mary to give back to Elkins.

The house's front door was half-open, so Dean didn't have to kick it in, and he charged through it. He almost fell over a sprawled body—Deanna, her neck at a fatally wrong angle. Around the corner and into the living room, and there was Samuel, his entire chest covered in the blood that still gushed from his slashed throat, his eyes wide and unseeing; if he wasn't already dead, he would be soon and nothing Dean could do would save him.

And sitting on the floor, with John half in her lap, was Mary. They were kissing, even as tears streaked down her cheeks. John's shirt was stained bright red. The knife lay on the floor next to them, covered in gore. "No!" Dean shouted, barely conscious of speaking, even as the kiss ended and John pulled back, smirking. "Pleasure doing business with you, kiddo," he said, and John's head tipped back and the smoke poured out and vanished.

"Goddamnit it, _no_," Dean said, and then he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned, and had just enough time to see Castiel before he was swept away.

* * *

Castiel put his hand on Dean's shoulder and sent him back to his own time. Mary and John did not notice him until he was very close, concerned only with each other, but when she looked up her eyes narrowed for just a second. Castiel was a little impressed, but not surprised; her family had been hunters for a long time.

"Sir," she started, but broke off, puzzled, when Castiel sank to one knee beside them. The rug was unpleasantly soaked with blood.

"Mary, what…?" John Winchester asked, as Castiel reached for them both.

_If Dean gets chatty, Winchester can't be allowed to remember the supernatural. _ Castiel did not like it, but orders were orders. He laid his fingers on their foreheads...and was startled to realize that there was nothing to erase from John Winchester's memory. A moment of investigation showed unpleasant traces, already beginning to fade. Azazel had made John forget. Castiel only had to smooth away the moments of his own appearance.

When it was done, he made himself invisible before they could notice him again, and left the past behind.

* * *

Dean wrenched himself awake. He was on Bobby's couch, leaning back in a way that was guaranteed to make his neck stiff if he kept it up for very long. He pushed forward until he could cover his face with his hands, and said quietly, "Goddamnit, Cas."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Castiel said. He sounded sympathetic. "You couldn't have stopped it." Dean felt his teeth grind. Castiel went on obliviously, "Destiny can't be changed, Dean. All roads lead to the same destination."

Dean sat up straight, rubbing his hand over his mouth, and forced his voice level when he said, "I want to talk to your boss."

"What?" Castiel said, with that squint of puzzlement that was so _fucking _familiar.

"You heard me," Dean said, holding on to calm with both hands.

"Dean, you needed to see the truth, of what Azazel did to your parents, but that's done now. It isn't necessary—"

Dean snapped, "I think it is!" Castiel's expression went blank in a way that meant he was thinking about being pissed off and Dean took a breath and held it for a second. Not that Castiel was going to smite him or anything, but he might refuse to do what Dean wanted. "Look," he said, making an effort to keep his tone reasonable, "I just want a second to talk to the guy calling the shots, OK? Because that blast from the past thing, it's seriously screwed up. It's...tough for me. For humans. OK?"

Castiel's face softened. "I'll ask, Dean, but I can't promise anything. Zachariah doesn't enjoy spending time on Earth."

Dean was halfway through saying thanks when Castiel vanished.

"Damn angels," he muttered.

* * *

It was significantly easier than Castiel had expected to convince Zachariah to go to Dean. In fact there was no convincing required; Zachariah hated taking a vessel, so being faced with ready agreement was a genuine shock. Less than two hours after he'd left Dean, he and Zachariah arrived in Robert Singer's home again.

Dean was sitting behind Robert's desk, slumped, but he looked up at the sound of their wings and straightened. "Castiel," he said, and then, "I said I wanted to talk to your boss."

Zachariah took a step forward, confident in her vessel's precarious shoes; Castiel didn't understand why human women subjected themselves to such things. "I _am _Castiel's boss," she said. "Zachariah. So pleased to meet you, Dean." She smiled. Castiel didn't think it looked particularly sincere.

Dean appeared to be dumbfounded, which Castiel found odd—it was not uncommon for a woman to be in a position of authority, and Dean had worked with women before—and said nothing for long enough that Zachariah sighed, making a show of impatience. Finally Dean said, "Zachariah's a guy's name."

"You cannot imagine how little your petty human notions of gender interest me," Zachariah said jovially. "Say what you want to say, Dean, I've got things to do."

"Yeah, I'll just bet you do," Dean said, nearly under his breath. He stood up and circled the desk to stand very close to Zachariah. "What the _fuck_ was that?" he said, in a tone that was almost pleasant. "You had some kind of story to tell me and you couldn't get Castiel here to just _ tell me_?" He waved one hand in Castiel's direction, but didn't so much as glance away from Zachariah.

"Oh, yes, Castiel," Zachariah said. "Castiel tells me that you got rid of the demon who was tempting your brother, good job. I should have known that those hunting instincts of yours wouldn't let us down." Castiel frowned. The praise didn't seem honest, somehow, and from the tight way Dean smiled, he didn't like it either.

"It was pretty easy to work it out," he said. "After what I heard in Hell."

Zachariah's Grace rippled with surprise. "What did you hear in Hell, Dean?" she asked.

Dean's smile widened a bit but got no closer to looking real. "I heard it's a good thing you sent people when you did. Or I mighta broken the first seal. Tellya what, if I hadn't heard a couple of flunkies talkin' about it, I think I probably _would _have."

Zachariah's lips set in an unhappy line, and Castiel felt a pang of chagrin. It had not occurred to him that Zachariah would care that Dean had known about the seal, but of course having the information presented to her like this was irksome. Dean seemed to be going out of his way to be hostile.

* * *

Dean went on, "Good thing for the world I didn't, huh? I mean I know it's only the first seal but better safe than sorry." Internally he was laughing his ass off; Zach looked like she'd bitten into a lemon, and even though this vessel was hot (Blonde, _amazing _rack, long legs that her short red dress let him see every inch of, and when exactly had _that_ change happened, anyhow?), it was still pretty funny, especially since she was trying to keep it under wraps. She was failing, spectacularly enough that Castiel was giving her a funny look—when _Cas_ started noticing your tells, they were basically neon signs.

Dean was trying to come up with another way to rub it in when Zach said, "We are all grateful for your fortitude." He suspected she was trying to confuse him with the big word, but since he knew what it meant he just shrugged.

"It was the whole world," he said, purely for the joy of watching Zachariah try not to grind her teeth. He was tempted to add something about how Castiel had gotten to him just in time, but he decided he didn't want to bring any boss crap down on Cas's head.

"Yes, very admirable," she said, like she was being strangled. "Castiel, we'll be expecting regular check-ins." And she vanished, just like that.

After a second Castiel said seriously, "Zachariah is right, Dean. We all admired your strength."

Dean couldn't help it; he just started to laugh.

* * *

In the morning they packed up the car and got on the road just before noon. Sam was pathetically grateful to be leaving, and Dean kind of agreed with him; it wasn't that he didn't like Bobby, but Sam's withdrawal hadn't been fun and they both needed to be away from where it had happened for a while.

"It'd be great if we can get there before the first victim gets it, but I don't remember her name," Dean said, as they were driving through Illinois.

"But you do remember who the shapeshifter's spending most of its time as?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, Jamie's bar wench friend. Lucy? It was one of the chicks from _Dracula_, and he kept calling Jamie the main one."

Even with his attention on the road Dean could feel Sam rolling his eyes. "'The main one' was Mina, so yeah, it'd be Lucy." He tapped his fingers on the door. "We shouldn't stop tonight. Damn, I wish—"

"It took as long as it took," Dean said. "I'm good for another couple hours but then it's your turn."

"Yeah," Sam said.

They rolled into Canonsburg before dawn on Wednesday morning. Dean let Sam pick the motel, even though that usually meant ending up in a chain instead of a mom and pop place. Sam could use the comfort and Dean was willing to spend a little extra time playing pool if he had to. They picked up a few hours' sleep before the bar opened.

Oktoberfest hadn't started yet, but it looked like the town was getting ready for it; there were cheap temporary booths going up in the streets and a team going around putting up banners as Dean headed for the bar. Sam was back in the room, combing through public records in the hopes of figuring out where the shapeshifter's house was; Dean didn't remember nearly well enough to find it in the small town streets.

The bar wasn't exactly busy in the middle of a weekday, and Dean wasn't surprised that Jamie wasn't on shift. Sadly, neither was "Lucy"; that would have been awfully convenient. Unless Lucy was a real person the 'shifter was copying and the name was just a coincidence. He'd have to check before they shot anybody. Dean got lunch but no beer and decided not to leave a message for Jamie after all. He didn't remember her last name and that would make it way less convincing if he claimed to know her from high school. But he refreshed his memory of the bar's layout and headed back to the motel.

He took one look at his brother's face and said, "What?"

"First vic's name is Marissa Wright," Sam said. He swiveled his laptop around so Dean could see the screen. "Police found her body a few hours ago."

"Crap, wonder what he had against her." Dean dropped into the other chair.

Sam shrugged and said, "If he's just on a monster kick, he probably thinks he needs some random victims. Dracula did."

"Crap," Dean repeated. "Well I guess we don't need to go look at the body, it's not going to tell us anything we don't already know. You got any leads on his...lair?" He made a face to show what he thought of the word and Sam rolled his eyes in agreement.

"There are a bunch of possibilities," Sam said. "It's probably faster to just pick him, or her, up at the bar tonight."

"We're gonna have to check and make sure Lucy isn't a real person," Dean said.

"Cell phone camera will pick up the eyes."

* * *

"Why are all the shapeshifters crazy murderers?" Dean complained, quietly enough that no one but Sam could hear him over the noise in the bar. It wasn't as packed as it would be Friday night, but it looked to him like some of the locals were getting an early start on the festival.

"We don't know they all are," Sam said. He had a beer but Dean had yet to see him drink from it.

"Saint Louis, Milwaukee, and now this," Dean said. He did not feel like mentioning the shapeshifter alpha, who'd been a _rapist_ crazy murderer.

"I can name three human serial killers too, Dean, that doesn't mean you're one."

Dean stared at him for a second. "Dude. Technically, we're both serial killers," he said.

Sam made the face he always made when he was reminded of the facts of hunting life and said, "Still, we don't know. There could be hundreds of shapeshifters living perfectly normal lives."

"Sure, whatever," Dean said, slumping back in his seat. He scanned the bar again, looking for Lucy's dark hair. Jamie was on shift, and still looked just as good as Dean remembered. She wasn't wearing the bar wench outfit yet, which was a crying shame.

"Are you sure Lucy works here?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged and said, "I know she's a waitress, but I guess it might not be here. Maybe she'll come to hang out with Jamie."

But fifteen minutes later, when it was time for them to order some more beers to keep the rent on their booth, the waitress who turned up was Lucy. She had a professional smile pasted on as she introduced herself and took their orders. Dean asked for some wings to go with the beers.

As she walked away from the table Sam gave him a questioning eyebrow and Dean said, "Yeah. Now we have to check and make sure she's a shifter. You wanna play drunk-and-happy or should I do it?"

"I will," Sam said.

By the time Lucy got back with the beers, Sam had his cell phone out and was taking video, a goofy grin plastered to his face as he ran patter about making sure he remembered his good time tonight. Dean leaned back in his seat and tried to look tolerant and amused. Between the two of them he and Lucy almost managed to drop his beer as she handed it over, but Dean caught it just in time.

"Oh, crud, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed.

Dean put on the charming smile and said, "No harm done, sweetheart, but if you want to make it up to me you could give me your number." If they had that, Sam might be able to get an address.

"Oh!" Lucy said, and blushed. If it was an act, it was a good one. "I don't, uh…"

"Can't blame a guy for trying," Dean said, still smiling.

"Um," she said.

Sam rolled his eyes and said, "Dean, cut it out. She's trying to work."

"Sure," Dean said. "Sorry."

"No, that's OK, I just…" Lucy trailed off. "Um, I'll bring out your wings as soon as they're ready." She turned and headed for the kitchen. As soon as she was out of earshot, Dean said, "Well?"

"Just a sec," Sam said, dropping the tipsy act. He poked his phone a little, and Dean saw it when the corners of his mouth tightened. "There it is." He pressed keys again and turned the phone so Dean could see its little screen. A few seconds of video of Lucy crossing the bar with beer mugs in hand played; halfway through it she turned her head and her eyes flashed silver. It might almost have been a trick of the light, except there wasn't anything special about where she was standing when it happened.

"Shifter," Dean said. Sam nodded.

Dean was pretty sure that there wasn't going to be another death that night; the second one, the fake-werewolf attack, hadn't happened till after they arrived. So they stayed in the bar, drinking less than they seemed to be and keeping an eye on the shifter. She wasn't doing anything suspicious, just talking to Jamie whenever she had half a chance. The plan was to wait till either the bar closed or her shift was over, follow her home, and deal with her there. They both had silver knives and silver-coated bullets.

When Dean got back from the men's room, he nearly fell back into his side of the booth. Sam snorted at him and Dean muttered, "Shut up, bitch."

"Jerk," Sam said lazily. "I think I'm gonna get a soda, I feel way more drunk than I ought to."

"That's 'cause you're a lightweight," Dean said, but Sam had a point; he'd noticed standing at the sink in the bathroom that he was a little shaky. Maybe the bar pulled out the really good beer for Oktoberfest. "I think around here you're supposed to call it pop."

Sam rolled his eyes. The motion made Dean a little queasy. It was worrying; they had to be on the ball to track the shifter.

As if the thought had summoned her, fake-Lucy showed up just then and took Sam's order for a couple of Cokes without comment, even though Sam was slurring a bit. Dean tried to smile at her but he had a feeling it didn't look very good. As she was walking away he turned to look at Sam and the motion of his head was dizzying.

"Think we're gonna have to wait till tomorrow," Dean said. "I don't feel right." Something about this seemed very familiar from last time, but he couldn't quite pin down what.

Sam had his eyes closed and his head leaned against the high back of the booth. "Me neither," he said. "This isn't...something's wrong."

Dean grunted in agreement, trying to think it through. He and Jamie and Lucy had had beers, he remembered that, and then… "Sam. Sam, she drugged us." Sam's eyes tried to get wide but didn't make it. Dean started to stand and his feet tangled in each other and he fell back, whapping his elbow painfully on the table. It gave him clarity, but only for a second.

"Dean?" Sam said.

"She drugged us," Dean repeated, or tried to, as his brother's face faded out.

* * *

Dean always hated waking up from being drugged, and thought it was a little sad that he recognized the symptoms well enough to realize that the shifter had used good old chloral hydrate, the classic mickey. Though given that the guy had a thing for classics, maybe that wasn't surprising.

He was lying on something, but it was soft. He pried his eyes open and saw a high ceiling that was barely lit by the candles scattered around the room. "Crap," Dean muttered, and tried to sit up. He got his arms all of six inches down from where they were stretched over his head before they caught where they were with a metallic clink that Dean didn't like at all. He had to crane his neck to see but the glance confirmed it: his wrists were bound by heavy metal manacles, with chains that, he assumed, led to the corner posts of the bed. He kicked one leg experimentally but the results were no better; his ankles were chained too.

And now that he thought about it, he felt awfully, well, naked. He didn't even seem to have shorts on, which meant that the shifter had undressed him (again, though at least this time there were no lederhosen), and he didn't have any of his handcuff keys.

"Real" manacles didn't open with handcuff keys. The mail-order prop kind, however, did. Not that that was going to do Dean much good.

"Son of a bitch," he said aloud, and started debating with himself about which thumb would be better to dislocate. Assuming he could manage to get his hands together.

He hadn't yet reached a decision when the door to the room swung silently open. Dean picked his head up as far as he could, hoping for Sam—yes, he was naked, but it wasn't like they'd never seen each others' junk before—but instead Lucy glided in.

She was wearing a lacy, fluttery dress that looked old-fashioned. "Oh good, you're awake," she said, and came to sit on the edge of the bed. Her gaze wandered over Dean in a really creepy way.

"I don't like hunters," she said idly, and reached out to skate her fingers up and down his bicep. His skin crawled. "But for you I'll make an exception...for a little while."

Dean forced his voice steady. "How'd you get on to us, anyway?"

The shifter smiled in a way that was probably charming as hell when you weren't chained to a fricking bed _naked_, and said, "I touched you when I handed you your drink." She made a little unhappy face. "I have to take someone's form to really understand them, but I can...skim the surface of anyone. _Shapeshifter, shapeshifter, _that's what you were thinking. But now the hunter is hunted, hmm? The hunter is _caught_."

"Yeah," Dean said. "The hunter's a little cold, actually, if you could get me some pants?"

"Why would I want to do that?" shifter-Lucy murmured. Her hand came down solidly on his arm and caressed it. She licked her lips.

Dean was starting to have a _really_ bad feeling about this. "Thought you were into that blonde chick at the bar," he said, remembering just in time that he shouldn't know Jamie's name.

"She'll be mine," the shapeshifter agreed. "But I'm not so limited as you humans are. And Dracula gave Harker to the Brides, after all."

Bad feeling: confirmed.

"Oh, don't be so upset," the shifter crooned. "I can make sure you enjoy yourself, I promise." She slid her hand along the line of his collarbone and across the top of his tattoo. "This is protection," she said, as Dean tried to burrow into the mattress with his back. "But what's this?" Her fingers brushed the scar.

Dean opened his mouth to give his usual answer, _I was really drunk_, and then an idea came to him in a blaze of inspiration. "That's from Castiel," he said. "He rescued me from Hell—literally. And he's not going to like it when he hears that I could use a little help here." He paused, but there was no fluttering of wings and she didn't look impressed. Was she gonna be in for a surprise. "What'd you do with my partner?" It was probably too much to hope that she didn't realize Sam was his brother, but he could pretend.

"Left him," she said airily, still stroking him. He tried to ease his arm out from under her hand, but he didn't have enough range of motion. "If he doesn't wake up by last call they'll get someone to take him to the drunk tank." She smiled again. "I'm sure he'll find you eventually. I'll deal with him then. But for now it's just you and me." She swiped her thumb over the tendon in his neck and he fought down a shiver.

"You know, if you let me go before Castiel gets here, he might let you live." He raised his voice a little, even though he knew it was dumb; Cas would hear him either way if he was going to at all. "You hear that? You should let her live if she lets me go."

For the first time she frowned, the expression sitting strangely on her pretty face. "You really believe that," she said, and pressed her hand into his bicep, tilting her head a little like she was listening. "Hell? You really believe it."

"That's because it's true," Dean retorted, and he was going to go on but the most welcome sound in the world filled the room, like hundreds of wings or the sound a flag made in a strong wind. The shapeshifter's head whipped around and she had just enough time to say "What—" before she was yanked up off the bed. Dean didn't have a great angle on it but he could see Castiel's face in profile and he knew just from the expression that there wasn't going to be any mercy here. The shapeshifter clawed at the hand on her throat; Castiel showed no sign that he noticed as his other arm moved behind his body.

The shifter stiffened and a choked cry forced its way out of her mouth. Castiel watched calmly until she went limp, her hands falling to dangle at her sides, and dropped the body.

_Son of a bitch_, Dean thought.

"Dean," Castiel said. He turned to face Dean more fully and by the time he did his sword was gone, back to wherever angels kept them. "Are you hurt?"

It took a second for Dean to work up an answer. "No, I'm OK," he said. "But if you could unlock these, that'd be great."

It was kind of embarrassing finding his clothes with Castiel right there in the room, but he refused to leave Dean "unprotected" in the shapeshifter's house. Dean finally just decided that Cas had seen him worse than naked and hunted up his stuff as fast as he could. He was relieved to find his 1911 in with his clothes, tucked away neatly folded in one of the big wooden chests pushed up to the wall. It was his favorite gun. The amulet was in there too, and Dean slipped the necklace over his head with a feeling of relief; he'd gotten used to wearing it again.

"OK," he said when he was dressed. "If the bar's still open Sam should be there, but if not we're gonna have to bust him out of the local pokey."

Castiel made the expression Dean had tagged "I don't understand that reference" and Dean said quickly, "Police station. If he was still out of it at closing—what time is it anyway?"

"It's nearly three am," Castiel said, sounding like he was being careful.

"Drunk tank it is, then," Dean said. "Shouldn't take too long to get there, this isn't a big town." He headed for the door, wondering as he did if the shifter had a car he could hotwire.

"I can take you there," Castiel said, still carefully. Dean turned to find that he was just standing where he'd been all along.

"No offense, but when you take me places it does bad things to my insides," Dean said.

* * *

Castiel wasn't forbidden to be where he was; his charge's safety was paramount. But he was unsettled to realize that he hadn't even thought about that when he heard Dean's prayer, informal as it had been. He'd just reached for his sense of Dean and flown. Now it occurred to him that he ought not to have interfered in a purely mortal matter, a hunt that Dean had chosen himself rather than being assigned to it. At the very least, Castiel should have left by now rather than offering further help. "It would be much faster," he said, nonetheless.

Dean appeared to think that over. "Point," he said reluctantly. "But we should check and make sure she was telling the truth about Sam not being here before we leave."

"You are the only living being in this house," Castiel said, after a moment of consideration. "Aside from bacteria, insects, and the mice in the kitchen cabinet."

Dean blinked in surprise. "You can just tell that?" he asked. Castiel nodded. "Wow. OK. I guess police station it is. Down the block, though, we can't just pop up inside."

Securing Sam Winchester's release from the police station was a rather longer process than Castiel had expected, and made more so because Dean protested when he offered to simply go and extract his brother from the "drunk tank", whatever that was. "Guy gets bailed out, that happens every day. Someone the size of Sam mysteriously vanishes from behind bars, _that_ gets noticed, and we're still cruising on being assumed dead. You don't have to stick around for this if you're bored."

"I have a job for you, when you've retrieved Sam," Castiel said.

"Great," Dean said. He didn't look as if he actually thought it was great. "I just hope he's not totally out of it. He's always been a lightweight. Wonder if it's 'cause of what Yellow Eyes did to him."

* * *

Sam was still groggy as they hauled him out of the police station, an arm over Dean's shoulders. Castiel stalked on Dean's other side, looking dangerously close to having had enough of this crap, and as soon as they were a reasonable distance from the station he reached for Dean and flew them all back to the hotel room. Sam looked like he was about to puke when they landed.

"Hey, Cas, can you clean him up?" Dean asked. "He's not in any shape to listen right now. Uh. Castiel. Sorry."

Castiel, fortunately, didn't look like he minded, and he laid his fingers on Sam's forehead. Sam twitched and blinked and suddenly stood up on his own, his legs steady. "Wow," he said. "I mean, thank you. Dean—what the hell happened? The last thing I remember is you saying we were drugged and then I woke up in the cell."

"The shifter got onto us. They can read your mind if they just touch you, did you know that? Because I did not know that."

Sam's face twisted with dismay. "It's been hours, and we have no way of knowing which way she went. We're going to have to keep an eye on the news, though if she's smart she won't—"

"No, Sam, it's fine," Dean said, waving his hands. "She's not running, trust me."

"How do you know?" Sam asked, eyes narrowing.

"He was there when I killed the shapeshifter," Castiel put in.

"When you _what?_"

* * *

Sam closed the journal and leaned his head back. "Nothing in here. Whatever you want to call it, Dad never ran into one."

Dean tapped his fingers on the wheel. "Bobby'll call us if he finds anything."

"What's to find?" Sam asked. "Castiel already told us we don't need any special weapons as long as we find the cursed object."

"It's not really cursed, he just keeps his heart in it," Dean said.

Even watching the road, long years of practice let him see the face Sam made. "Yeah, but if I don't call it that I'll start thinking of it as the phylactery and that's just a whole can of worms."

"The fie-what?"

"_Phylactery_," Sam repeated, and sighed. "There's a monster in Dungeons and Dragons called a lich, and it—"

"Wait, wait just a second," Dean said. "You played Dungeons and Dragons? When?" He could feel the grin spreading over his face.

"Jess liked it," Sam said, aggrieved. "So don't even start, Dean, I've seen some of the things you've done to get laid."

OK, kid had a point. "Whatever, what's a lich?"

"Well, technically it's from an Old English word that just meant 'corpse'," Sam said. Dean rolled his eyes, because he really didn't care about Old English. "But in the game it was a powerful wizard who used black magic to make himself immortal. He'd have a special magic item called a phylactery, and until you destroyed that he'd never stay dead. So...basically what we've got here."

"Except here, he has to renew the black magic once every three months by killing someone."

"Yeah," said Sam.

* * *

"What're we gonna do if he has his phy-thingie in a safety deposit box or something?" Dean asked, as he slung his duffel bag onto his bed. "Not really in the mood for another SWAT team standoff."

"You really need to listen when someone briefs us on the case," Sam said. "Castiel told us he has to keep it in his primary residence."

"Oh, right." Dean vaguely remembered hearing that, now that Sam said it. "'Kay, so where's that?"

Sam set his laptop on the room's small table as he replied, "That's what I'm planning on finding out. I wish Castiel had been sure he was still using the same name."

Dean looked his brother over, taking in the signs with an expert eye. Sam was planning on settling in for a nice long research session, Dean could smell it in the air. _Boring_.

"I'm gonna go hit the bar down the street, see if they've got a pool table," Dean said.

It was easier to hustle pool when you had two guys. You could run the one where one guy was sober and trying to keep the drunk one from making bets he couldn't win, or the one where they were both drunk and egging each other on, or you could even pretend not to know each other and have your partner lay side bets on the game—either for you or against you. Dean kind of liked "against" because it was much less likely that anyone was going to get pissed enough to start throwing punches that way, but it tended to have lower profits, and also took a little more setup.

He also liked to hustle with two guys because if the marks caught on and ganged up, it was nice to have someone watching your back.

But Dean could do it by himself, and he did, letting his game degrade slowly while he drank less than he seemed to. He ended up winning a fair bit of cash from a woman a few years younger than Ellen, who he suspected might actually have been trying to hustle _him_; she was pretty good, but he was better, and she didn't get too pissed off when he sank his last ball. After that he went and nabbed himself a booth to wait till the crowd turned over a little. The bartender wasn't giving him a hairy eyeball so much as an amused one, so that was OK.

Dean sat in his booth and turned his beer mug slowly around on the table, watching the way the light of the neon signs caught in the glass. He wasn't really having a good time, sitting in the bar all by himself; he couldn't pick someone up if he wanted to have a shot at another game (and look how well that had turned out last time he'd done it, anyway) and going to a bar to drink alone was kind of pathetic.

He had his mouth open to say, _Hey, Cas, I'm in this bar in Cambridge, wanna come hang out_ when he remembered that a) Cas was epically bad at hustling pool, something that had been firmly established the year he spent falling, and b) _Castiel_ wasn't going to want to spend time watching Dean drink anyway.

"Crap," Dean muttered, and drank some more beer.

* * *

"Dude, are you sure about this?" Dean asked, peering through the binoculars. Their target, if that's what he really was, looked like a middle-aged white guy with graying hair and the beginnings of a pot belly. He had a wife-slash-girlfriend who looked like she'd been pretty hot back in the day, and at least three houseguests.

"No," Sam said, sounding a little annoyed. "He's the best lead I could dig up, but there are at least three other possibles. I really didn't have that much to go on." Since Castiel had basically given Sam a circle on a map, Dean could see where that could get frustrating.

Dean grunted agreement and watched as the dude took hedge-clippers to a bush. The house was big and the back yard matched, and that kind of stuff took maintenance, as Dean had learned at Lisa's. "OK, how do you want to do this?" Dean asked.

"We just need time to search the house. The phylactery is too big to wear so he can't carry it around with him."

"So wait till they all go out, bust in, and walk around touching things till something gives us the heebie-jeebies."

Sam turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. Dean dropped the binocs for a second and stared back. "What?"

"Heebie-jeebies?" Sam said.

"Bad vibes? The creeps? Castiel said it'd feel evil, what else do you want to call it?"

Sam shook his head and muttered, "I saw a dummy, it gave me the wig." Dean didn't ask, because asking about that kind of thing always led to a long description of whatever episode of Buffy the quote had come from and Dean didn't care if he didn't get to watch the blonde chick staking vamps in a halter top.

* * *

They waited until the whole house went out for the evening before they snuck in. From the look of the bedrooms, all the "houseguests" actually lived there, which was weird but the place was huge so whatever. They split up to search for the thing, Sam taking the upper floors and Dean with the ground floor and the basement.

This, Dean thought an hour later as he heard the angry voice behind him, was maybe not the best plan they'd ever come up with.

"Who the hell are you?" a man demanded, and Dean turned to find one of the residents standing on the steps up to the kitchen. It wasn't their target; he was younger and looked like the kind of guy who did something with computers for a living.

Dean said, "Uh, yeah, I'm with the, uh...you know what, never mind, I'm just gonna go, you can forget I was ever here."

The guy's eyes narrowed. "You're not a burglar," he said. "Burglars would be searching the bedrooms. Laptops, jewelry, stuff like that."

"Sometimes people hide stuff in the basement?" Dean tried.

The guy held up a hand in a way that looked way too familiar and waved it, and sure enough Dean felt himself get smacked by something he couldn't see. He crashed into a chest freezer and crumpled, the breath driven out of him.

"Hunter," the guy said venomously. Dean was going to go out on a limb and assume he was the lich. He rolled onto his side, coughing.

"Never shot a deer in my life," he wheezed, and tried to get a hand under himself to push to his knees. He used the movement as cover to reach into his jacket for his gun. Not that it was going to do him much good, because shooting the guy before his special thing was gone would actually be bad. But maybe he didn't know Dean knew that and would pretend to be afraid of it.

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was what Dean had.

"Don't play dumb," the guy ordered. Dean heard his feet coming down the steps and stopping. "You know I don't mean deer."

Dean straightened and drew his gun, pointing it at the lich. "Whatever," he said.

The guy snorted and said, "If you think that's going to do you any good, you're not just playing dumb."

_Well, crap_, Dean thought, but he didn't change his aim as he got to his feet. "Look, I don't want to shoot you," he said. Killing, apparently, would let the guy teleport himself to his magic thing, and Dean wasn't sure how much shooting counted as "killing" in this case. Also it was the kind of thing a regular thief in over his head might say. Maybe. "I just want to get out of here, OK?"

The guy sighed. "Seriously, drop the act." He waved again and Dean's gun was torn from his grip, wrenching his fingers painfully. The lich took another step towards him and Dean did the only thing he could think of: he charged.

Dean could tell right away that the dude wasn't used to physical fights, no matter how powerful a wizard he was. Maybe he drugged his victims, or used his magic to beat them senseless; he didn't grapple with them. They hit the floor with Dean on top, in control of the clinch, and Dean was feeling pretty good about it until the lich wrenched one hand free of his grip for long enough to rest it on Dean's breastbone. It was like being kicked by a horse and as he fell Dean had time to be grateful he wasn't up against anything because being braced against a solid object would probably have meant that his chest _actually _caved in instead of just feeling like it.

He landed hard and couldn't move for a second, trying desperately to make his battered lungs draw a breath. Dean rolled again, more slowly this time, and made himself focus as the lich got to one knee. He couldn't remember how you got breathing to be automatic.

Dean's pocket vibrated as his phone got a text message. _Sorry, Sammy, no time to check_, Dean thought blearily. The lich, who was kind of tubby, stood up with a huff and walked over to where Dean was curled on his side.

"You couldn't have done this a month ago?" the guy said. He sounded irritated, as if Dean had offered him concert tickets for a night he already had plans. "I can hardly keep you in the basement till the Solstice." He punctuated the sentence by kicking Dean in the thigh, hard enough that there was gonna be an interesting bruise later.

"Guest...room," Dean forced out.

"Very f—" the lich started, and then his eyes widened and he wavered where he stood. "What? No!" the guy exclaimed. His hand flew to his chest and flattened there. For a second there was silence broken only by Dean's gusty breaths, and then the lich raised his other hand with two fingers extended like Cas about to zap somebody, and pressed them to the side of his own neck. The gesture was bizarre and it took Dean some squinting to figure out that the guy was _taking his pulse_.

Their eyes met and Dean saw the moment that the lich realized Dean knew what he was doing. They stayed frozen a beat longer, staring at each other, and burst into movement at the same instant, both of them diving for Dean's dropped gun.

Well, Dean was more crawling for it.

His lungs burned and he felt like he was moving through soup, but the lich wasn't in very good shape either, apparently. He got within reach of the gun first but Dean rammed into his side and knocked him away. They rolled, grappling, and Dean had learned his lesson; he kept the hands well away from his own body this time. In his pocket his phone rang. Dean paid no attention.

When he was sure he had the angle right, Dean pushed off the lich. He landed better since he was doing it on purpose, rolled one more time, grabbed his gun, and brought it around as the lich was pointing one deadly hand at him. He had just enough time to see the lich's snarl as he pulled the trigger.

The sound of the shot was painfully loud in the enclosed, hard-surfaced space of the basement. Dean put the safety back on and slumped, thinking about just lying there for a while, except in a second there would be blood to worry about...

"Dean!" Sam's voice said, and Dean looked up to see his brother standing at the top of the cellar steps, his phone halfway to his ear and his gun half-drawn.

"Hey, Sam," Dean said, and mustered a smile. "Good timing."

* * *

"Dear Castiel," Dean said under his breath. "Creepy magic guy is dead, hopefully no film at eleven." He hesitated. Sam was back at the motel room, sleeping, because that was what he usually did when a case was over, but Dean had been too keyed up for it. And he didn't like drinking alone. "If you want details, you can drop in. Actually even if you don't want details. You know where I am, right? Just don't show up in the middle of the—"

"Hello, Dean," Castiel said from behind him.

Dean jumped and turned on his barstool, wincing as the movement made his sore ribs shout. Castiel was right behind him, naturally. He glanced around but no one seemed to have noticed the sudden appearance of a trenchcoat, so that was OK. Still, "Cas, dude, you can't just pop in to public places like that. People will notice."

Castiel managed to shrug without visibly moving anything, and said, "Not in my experience."

"But—" Castiel just watched him, and Dean sighed. "OK, whatever, sit down. You want a beer?"

Castiel blinked at him and said cautiously, "I don't know." He eyed the barstool next to Dean's for a second, and then sat on it like he was trying a new skill. Hell, maybe he was; it wasn't like angels spent a lot of time in bars. He was sitting perfectly straight, which argued for the "new experience" idea.

Dean gestured for the bartender and said, "Another beer for my buddy here." He leaned his elbows on the bar. "You want the 411 on the lich dude?"

"If that means the 'details' you mentioned, it's unnecessary. It's enough that you're certain he's dead," Castiel said. "But why do you call him a _lich_?"

Dean took a second to answer because—well, because if Castiel didn't want information, it meant he'd shown up just because he'd wanted to. Just because Dean had asked him to. Dean wasn't sure what to do with that. "Uh. Sam called him that, something about some game he played in college," he said. Castiel gave him the narrow-eyed _Humans are confusing_ look and he shrugged. "Yeah, I dunno either."

Cas's beer arrived and he turned the confused look on it, then picked it up experimentally. Dean tried not to laugh as Castiel sipped, with an expression that suggested this was something he needed to concentrate on.

After a second, Dean said, "How is it?"

"It tastes like molecules," Castiel said. But he was almost smiling.

* * *

Sam didn't like the idea of just going and killing the witches to keep them from raising Samhain (and he also made Dean listen to the lecture about how it was Celtic and pronounced _sowen_ and it was just like demons to screw things up, which Dean allowed because this Sam had never told him about it before). Dean didn't particularly like it either, but they _were_ witches and were probably going to try to raise the demon even though it wasn't a seal. Anyway they'd already pawned the ghost sickness ghost off on Bobby. Sam insisted on doing a lot of research to verify that the two were actually witches (they were) and at that refused to just kill them by surprise.

Fortunately, it wasn't hard to get the witches suspicious. They got a little beat up, but the job got done.

Sam didn't have time to mope about being a bad person for long before Castiel showed up with another case.

* * *

"Remind me again why we're doing this _now_," Dean said, hunching into his jacket. "The place is closed for the season, Nessie isn't gonna eat anyone."

"There's still staff," Sam said, in a tone that suggested he was being the reasonable one here. "Plus if we get it now we don't have to worry about it eating anyone in the spring."

Dean looked out over the water. It was fricking cold and about to be dark, and his feet felt damp even though he knew perfectly well they weren't.

They were sitting on the fake beach that Kellerman's Resort had built on the edge of their huge, freezing Catskill Mountains lake. The place was probably nice in the summer, but it was almost November and the stiff breeze went right through Dean's jeans. At least he had a leather jacket, unlike Sam.

Thirty feet away, the goat they were using as bait shook its head and...made whatever noise goats make. It sort of sounded like _baaa_, but that was sheep, wasn't it? Dean didn't know from farm animals.

"Thing better hurry up," Dean grumbled. "I don't wanna be out here all night." There wasn't even any moon, and they had flashlights but they didn't want to use them till Nessie showed up.

* * *

Dean was half asleep—honestly, maybe more than half—when Sam nudged him. "Wake up," his brother muttered.

Dean jumped and said, "M'wake!"

"You better be, because it's coming," Sam said.

Dean sat up straight and shook himself. Down the beach the pale blur of the goat was as far from the water as it could get, pulling at the chain and making unhappy goat noises.

Sam stood and Dean followed, cold and stiff. There was a splash from the direction of the lake and the goat's cries turned frantic. "Good thing we didn't use rope," Dean said.

"Goats eat rope," Sam said—like that was vital information—without taking his eyes off the animal. "OK, lights."

They flipped their flashlights on simultaneously. The things were cheap and not sturdy, but they cast broad, bright beams that illuminated the goat (it looked terrified, and Dean felt sorry for it) and the sand—and the thick, blotchy green _tentacle_ that was crawling up the beach.

"Oh _crap,_" Dean said. He'd been expecting something like a dinosaur, not a fricking tentacle monster. He set his flashlight on the sand, pointing at the goat, and drew his gun.

"We have to get it further out of the water," said Sam, and took off. _Towards_ the goat.

"Sam!" Dean shouted, but Sam paid no attention. He jumped over the tentacle and knelt next to the terrified animal, grabbing for the snap link that held the chain to its collar. The tentacle hesitated for a second and then made a rush for Sam's unprotected back. Dean shot; the sound would probably carry to the inhabited buildings, but he had other things to worry about.

He was pretty sure the bullet hit, because the tentacle shivered and drew back a bit. Dean could smell it now, a horrible rotten-fish smell that coated the inside of his nose and mouth like oil. Another tentacle, this one a little thinner, emerged from the water and started questing in his direction. Sam unsnapped the goat at last and it took off like a shot, a dead sprint as soon as it started moving. Dean just hoped it went in a direction where someone would find it and take it back to its owner.

He shot again and the second tentacle flinched and wove, looking uncertain. Sam jumped up and backed away from the water, waving his arms and shouting, "Hey, come on, come and get me!"

"Damnit, Sammy," Dean said. It was a solid idea—they had to get the thing's body out of the water if the flare guns were going to work—but that didn't mean he had to like it. He took a few steps in his brother's direction and then frowned when his trailing foot caught on something.

He had just enough time to look down and see another tentacle wrapped around his left ankle before it yanked.

His shoulder slammed into the sand; it wasn't as bad as it would have been on concrete or even regular dirt but it knocked him off his bearings as the tentacle hoisted him into the air like a carcass in a slaughterhouse. He lost his grip on his gun as his fingers relaxed involuntarily.

"Dean!" he heard Sam yell.

Dean wasn't sure which way he wanted to be going, but he had a strong feeling it wasn't where the tentacle was taking him. He tried to climb up his own body, thanking all the sit-ups he forced himself to do as his hands crawled up his calf. He snatched the knife out of his boot and flailed around for something to slice with it.

There were way more tentacles than he was comfortable with; he picked the nearest one and swiped. There wasn't much leverage behind the cut but it scored the surface and he caught a glimpse of black fluid welling out of the wound before that tentacle whipped away.

_Shit, Cas, why didn't you tell us_? he thought, with remarkable calm, as something loomed out of the dark beneath him. The smell of fish was so strong it was practically a physical thing, and in the edges of the light from the flashlights he could see a deeper darkness appearing in the mass below him. Dean wasn't any kind of expert on lake monsters, but he'd seen enough movies to suspect that that was the thing opening its mouth, which was _not_ a development he was OK with.

Dean tried to reach something else with the knife but it seemed like the monster had learned its lesson. From one side, there was another shout and a streak of light as a flare flashed across Dean's vision. It hit the tentacle monster in the, uh, side, burning.

The monster went absolutely _apeshit_. Dean screamed as the tentacle holding him flailed, wrenching every joint in his leg, and he slammed into another tentacle. It knocked the wind out of him, which wouldn't have been such a big deal except that the tentacle slammed down into the water and he was submerged just in time to try to take a breath.

_Cas, you better make sure I don't go to Hell again,_ Dean thought, fighting the urge to cough with everything he had. He had no idea which way was up and didn't think he could have swum for it anyway. The water all around him was churning, tentacles passing between him and the light—light that was suddenly very bright, much brighter than it should have been, and then something hit the back of his head and Dean was gone before he had time to figure it out.

* * *

He opened his eyes to find Sam's worried face hovering over him. "Dean, thank God," Sam said, and his shoulders slumped. He sat back on his heels. Dean blinked a little and said cautiously, "If I move am I gonna break something?"

"No," said a familiar voice from his other side, and Dean turned his head to find Castiel kneeling in the sand. "I've healed you."

Now that Dean thought about it, he did feel pretty good for a guy who'd just gone mano-a-tentacle with something the size of a school bus. He pushed cautiously up onto his elbows, and when that went OK he sat up straight.

He was lying on the sand near where the fake beach ended and grass took over. On the far side of Castiel he could see a heap of tentacles that he was going to assume was Nessie. There was no sign of the goat, which didn't surprise him even a little; if he'd been it, he'd have kept running till he hit the PA border. "What the hell happened?"

"So shooting it with the flare gun wasn't a great idea," Sam said. "It went crazy."

"Yeah, I noticed," Dean said.

Sam made an apologetic face. "I didn't have any other ideas." Dean shrugged. Sam went on, "You were underwater, and then Castiel showed up. He touched it, there was a bright flash, and it just sort of...died."

Dean turned his head again to look at Castiel, who said, "I smote it." Dean kept looking for a few seconds, but Cas didn't seem to feel the need to add any detail so he turned back to his brother.

Sam said, "He waded into the water and got you. You were, uh, in bad shape." Sam's lips pressed together in a way Dean recognized. He'd been _dead_, or at least most of the way there.

He turned to Cas again and said, "Thanks, man."

"You're welcome," Castiel said, and hesitated. "Dean…please be more careful in the future." Dean stared, not sure how to respond to that, and he could feel Sam at his shoulder radiating similar disbelief. "Uh, OK?" he said finally. Castiel nodded and got to his feet. He didn't seem to need to brush the sand off himself, and as soon as he was standing up straight he vanished, in that weird way where he'd just never been there at all. That never got less creepy, no matter how many times Dean saw it.

Dean turned one more time to look at Sam, whose eyes were wide and confused. Dean said, "I dunno either."

Sam stared for a second, and then his eyes drifted over Dean's shoulder and he sucked air through his teeth. "What the hell are we going to do with _that_?" he asked.

Dean glanced at it as he stood up and shrugged. "I say we leave it."

"Dean, it's a tentacle monster."

"Dude, it's not a human body, what're they gonna do? Dust it for prints? Anyway I don't have a bulldozer." He offered Sam a hand up. "Come on, I want to take a shower, I smell like fish. Did you see where my gun went?"

* * *

In early November, Bobby finally got hold of some holy oil. He handed it over reluctantly, but Dean didn't care about that. He waited until Bobby and Sam were both asleep before he went out.

He poured the circle so that it all but filled the storage room in the garage, and then he took one of those butane camping lighters, duct-taped the heck out of it so it would burn constantly, and set it on the floor where he could nudge it with his foot.

He took a deep breath. "Gabriel," he said. "Or should I say, _Loki_. I know who you are. I want to talk."

Nothing happened.

"Gabriel, I know you can still hear prayers. You want to know how I know about your own private witness protection, you're gonna have to show up and talk about it." He waited. Still nothing.

"Look, Gabe, eventually Castiel is gonna come give me another job, and who knows what I might let slip?"

Between one blink and the next, there was suddenly someone right in Dean's face—or at least as close as the guy could get when he was five inches shorter than Dean was. "Don't threaten me," he said, sounding cheerful.

Dean shook off the shock and said, "Step back."

The Trickster snorted. "Why?"

"Hey, you wanna be deep fried, be my guest," Dean said. He tapped the burning lighter so it fell. Gabriel looked down and his eyes widened as he threw himself back into the middle of the room. The flames sprang up, neatly enclosing him, and Dean bent to pick up the lighter and tore the tape off the trigger. "Sorry," he said. "Just a little insurance, you know. I'll put it out when we're done."

Gabriel didn't look pissed, but that didn't mean anything. "What's this supposed to do?" he asked, in a tone of idle curiosity.

"Oh, you know, it keeps angels in," Dean said.

"Yeah, great, but why do you think it's gonna hold me?"

"You're the archangel Gabriel," Dean said. "Or at least, you showed up when I prayed to him."

Gabriel laughed. "You prayed to Loki, which I'll admit is impressive. But no one's seen Gabriel in millennia, kid. Someone slip a mickey in your power shake?"

Dean shrugged and said, "Tell you what, jump out of the holy fire and we'll call it my mistake."

There was a long pause and then the Trickster sighed. "Fine. Now tell me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you as soon as I get out of this. I mean, you're gonna talk to Castiel again, and who knows what you might let slip?" He said the last few words with a broad, tooth-baring expression that wasn't within miles of a smile.

"Couple of reasons," Dean said. "For one thing, you don't want to risk that I might end up in Hell again. I might break the seal." He paused. Gabriel didn't react. "The other thing is, if you kill me you can't save your sister."

"My _what_?" Gabriel said.

"She pulled out her Grace, she fell. I know where she lives. And I know everyone's looking for her."

Dean had two whole seconds to enjoy the Trickster looking totally flabbergasted before he pulled himself together. "What's her name?" he demanded.

"What are you gonna do if I tell you?"

"How about I _not kill you_?" Gabriel shouted. Dean winced and had to fight the urge to slap his hands over his ears. Gabriel stopped and sighed again and said, "If she fell—the demons will want her because she'll be tuned in again, now that the angels are back on earth openly. And the angels will want her because—"

"Because she disobeyed," Dean said. Cas had explained it to him, not long before the end, that Anna must have been taken back to Bible camp too, which had gone a long way towards making him less pissed at her.

"Yeah," the Trickster said. "Look, Dean, I know we've had our little differences, but this…"

"Hey, I called you," Dean said. "She was a good person. She wanted to stay here, stay human. Can you help her with that?"

"I don't know," the Trickster said, like it was painful to admit it.

"Her Grace isn't where it fell, Uriel has it," Dean said. He didn't think he was imagining the look of distaste that went over Gabriel's face at the name. "So unless you have some way to get in to Heaven to get it back, she's stuck a puny mortal."

Gabriel cocked his head, a disturbingly familiar gesture, and said, "You know more than you should."

"Yeah," Dean said.

Gabriel pursed his lips. "And you're not going to tell me how."

"Good guess."

"Fine, be that way. What's her name?"

Dean held up the note he'd written and said, "Anna Milton, all the rest of the info I have is right here."

The Trickster didn't move. After a second he heaved a put-upon sigh and said, "I can't take that over the fire, muttonhead."

Dean rolled his eyes. He stomped on the line and smudged his foot around until there was a nice big gap in the ring of fire, and held out the note. Gabriel walked over slowly to take it, and stood for a second looking at the paper. "OK, two things," the archangel said, looking up. "I'm not gonna say I owe you one for this, but you and your brother are off my radar for good. No more tricks, ever. The other thing is, you didn't break."

Dean blinked in surprise and nodded.

"Good job," Gabriel said, and he sounded totally serious. But then he grinned and said, "Try to stay out of Hell next time, Deano!" and snapped his fingers.

Dean just stood there for a couple of minutes before he stomped out the rest of the fire and went to put the oil jug in the car.

* * *

All Dean remembered about the magicians was that the bad one had a scar on his temple. (And to not go to clubs the old guy told him about.) That turned out to be enough. Then they went to Fairfax; they had to search three buses before they found the one the ghost's dad drove, but they managed to burn the lock of hair without more than a couple of bruises. It was kind of cool how easy it was to take care of business when you didn't have to do all the hard work first.

That said, Dean was antsy, and he knew Sam noticed. They hadn't heard a peep out of Lilith since New Harmony, and Dean couldn't figure out why; it seemed like she'd kind of have to want him back in Hell.

On the other hand, maybe she was getting cold feet over the fact that getting Lucifer out meant she'd bite the big one. Maybe _she _was back in Hell, planning. He didn't know, and it was freaking him out. But between them he and Sam managed to confirm that the seal-magic would be ruined—not forever, but for a really long time, like several hundred years—if Lilith died before all the other seals were broken, so at least that was a viable plan. In whatever way you could call "killing the original demon" a viable plan, but Dean's calibration for what he could kill had crept up some since he and Sam had started working together again, back in the day when _one_ demon had been a huge, scary thing.

One big upside was that Cas didn't seem to be worried about angels dying, so maybe that meant that Uriel hadn't gone bad after all, though Dean was willing to bet that he'd still be an asshole if he showed up. And no dead angels meant no big investigation, and that meant no Alastair, and Dean could deal with Alastair being alive as long as he never, ever had to see him, ever again. Alastair didn't like Earth very much anyway, thought it was too limiting. Without the bait of Anna, he'd happily stay down in the Pit.

* * *

Castiel knew that Dean wasn't calling him consciously. He went anyway, arriving to find Dean deep in the grip of a nightmare. Castiel studied it, and frowned; though the dream was of Hell, Dean was not being tortured. Instead he stood before the rack, a razor glittering in his hand as he studied a weeping soul with a cruel smile Castiel had never thought to see on the Righteous Man's face.

He reached into the fabric of the dream and twisted it, perhaps carelessly in his eagerness to erase the unsettling image. Dean flinched and gasped as he woke. It took him a few seconds to open his eyes and focus on Castiel, but when he did a look of naked gratitude covered his face.

"Cas," he said quietly. "Thanks, I...look, do you…?" Dean paused, and glanced at the other bed, where his brother slept peacefully. "If you have some time, could we take this outside?"

Castiel nodded, though he wasn't sure what "this" might be. He had no pressing demands on his time; he could afford to spare Dean some.

"Great," Dean said, and raised his hands to press them over his eyes. "I'll meet you out by my car, I have to get dressed." It took Castiel a moment to realize that Dean didn't intend to get out of his bed until Castiel had left the room.

The parking lot outside seemed a poor venue for whatever Dean might have in mind, but Castiel could see the utility of being able to talk with less fear of disturbing Sam. He entertained himself watching the dance of the water molecules his vessel's breath expelled into the air until the door to the Winchesters' room opened and Dean emerged, hunched into his leather jacket. The light of the sodium lamps made him look tired and sick, and Castiel felt a twinge of anxiety.

Dean smiled, though it looked like it was an effort. "C'mon, there are some picnic tables down there," he said, and started walking without waiting for an answer. Castiel followed down the row of doors to the end of the building, where rough wooden tables sat on grass that was brown with winter. Dean took the bench seat of one and waved at another; Castiel assumed it would be polite to sit, and did so.

Dean sat with his head tipped back, his eyes on the stars, and said nothing for several minutes. Castiel waited. They were only a few feet apart, facing each other, but the distance felt much greater.

"Thank you," Dean said finally, and brought his gaze down to meet Castiel's.

"For what?"

"For waking me up." Dean sighed. "I don't like that dream, Cas. I mean Castiel."

"You can call me Cas," Castiel said. "I...don't mind." He was surprised to find that he didn't. Dean looked a little startled as well. "Do you have that dream often?"

Dean's mouth twisted. "More often than I want."

"It's not surprising to dream of failure after an ordeal, but you should remember that you didn't fail," Castiel said. "The seal remains unbroken."

For some reason that made Dean more unhappy, rather than less, and he looked down at his hands, clasped on his knees. "I should have been stronger," he said lowly, though there was no one to overhear them.

"You were strong enough."

"Only because I knew—because I knew what would happen. If I hadn't known, Cas. I would have said yes to him. I'm not what you think I am. I'm not a righteous man."

"There is no shame in coming to the end of your strength," Castiel said. "Dean, Hell was _made_ to break human souls. No one could blame you if you had taken up the knife."

Dean laughed, but Castiel didn't think he meant it. "You're wrong there. I could blame myself. I would. I—" He stopped and cleared his throat, shrugging.

"Then it's just as well that you don't have to," Castiel said.

Dean met Castiel's eyes again. "What's past is past. Right?"

"That's a tautology," Castiel said, and was gratified when Dean smiled.

"You're such a nerd," he said. "You and Sam should get together and research something, you'd love it."

Castiel stared in puzzlement for a second. "I don't need to...research."

"Angel brain," Dean said. Silence fell between them. Castiel could hear the sparse traffic on the nearby road, the nocturnal animals going about their business. At last Dean sighed again. "Look, I should get some more sleep. Can you…"

Castiel waited, but Dean seemed disinclined to finish the question. "Dean, you can ask," he said.

Dean took a breath and said, "Can you make it so I don't dream anymore?"

Castiel considered his answer for a moment. "In general, no. Dreaming helps your mind to function, even when it's unpleasant," he said. Dean looked crestfallen. "But for tonight, I can."

When Dean smiled this time, it looked more sure. "Thanks again, Cas," he said.

* * *

"Wait, you think it's a what?" Dean asked. It was most of two weeks since the nightmare Cas had woken him from, and Dean had started to wonder when Zach was going to send them on another errand.

"A shapeshifter," Castiel repeated. "It seems to have taken the form of a man and killed the man's wife."

Dean studied the angel in confusion. Cas wasn't lying to him, he'd bet his car on it, but that didn't make any sense. "In Bedford Iowa, you're sure?"

"Yes," Cas said, looking confused.

Dean bit his lip for a second. Sam was giving him a look, but knew not to say anything while Castiel was still there. "OK, well, we'll check it out." He ran over distances in his head. "Take us about a day to get there, though."

"I could transport you," Castiel said.

Dean's shudder was only half fake. "No offense, dude, but I hate it when you do that."

Dean suspected that _actually _rolling his eyes was beneath Cas's angelic dignity, but he managed to imply it anyway. "You should hurry, then," Cas said.

"Will do," Dean said, but the sound of Cas's wings cut across the second word and he was gone.

Sam waited a beat before he said, "OK, why is this one bothering you?"

Dean felt himself frown. "Because if this is what I think it is, it's not a shapeshifter and Cas's boss should have known that."

"You mean Castiel should have known," Sam said.

"No, Cas was tellin' us what he got told," Dean said. "But a guy killing his wife in Bedford, that's not a shapeshifter."

"This is a case you—we did before."

"Yeah," Dean said, reaching for his bag. "It's a siren."

* * *

The drive gave Dean plenty of time to fill Sam in on sirens, what they did and how to kill them, though the whole "my siren was a guy" thing was a little awkward. Not that Sam didn't know that Dean occasionally went for guys; it was more that fake-Nick had wormed his way in by being a perfect _brother_ rather than a perfect hookup.

"We were having some issues at the time," Dean said stiffly.

"No kidding," said Sam, staring at nothing in particular in a passing field.

"You were lying to me. You thought I was too broken to hunt anymore. I was a little pissed off but it's not like I was gonna do anything without frickin' mind control. You weren't any better once it got you." He tightened his grip on the wheel. "Kept talking about how I was holding you back, how you didn't need me because you had _Ruby_."

"Jesus, Dean," Sam said, too loud. "You were right, OK? You were right about Ruby. You're always _right_, so just...let it go."

"Well forgive me for trying to save the goddamn world, Sam. I did the Apocalypse once, there's no reason to do it again."

Sam snorted and crossed his arms. "I said you were right."

"Sam—"

"So when we get there," Sam went on, like Dean hadn't said a word, "_you_ can go get the blood samples and I'll stake out the strip club. Your perfect brother isn't going to tempt me."

Dean frowned, even though it seemed like a reasonable plan. "Hey, you wanna miss the hot coroner, that's fine by me."

"Medical examiner," Sam huffed, and Dean rolled his eyes.

"Like anyone cares," he said.

* * *

The weather in Bedford was mild, which Dean appreciated. He didn't hate cold, but snow, and the road salt that went with it, was bad for his baby. Sam was still fuming while they got a room, in the quiet, annoying way he'd perfected when he was a teenager. There was never anything you could put your finger on, but you knew Sam was pissed, oh yeah. They settled in to the room and Dean hauled out his Fed suit.

Sam dropped Dean at the hospital, which was annoying but reasonable since the Honey Wagon was further away. The coroner was in her office, the same one Dean remembered, and she looked up from paperwork as he tapped on the doorframe. "Dr. Roberts?"

"Yes," she said, getting to her feet.

"I'm Special Agent Murdoch, FBI," Dean said, flashing his current badge and smiling. She _was_ kinda hot. "Dean Murdoch. I'm here about a couple of cases you've been handling for the sheriff's office?" He reached her desk and they shook hands, and she motioned him to a chair.

"Whatever I can do. Which cases?"

"Adam Benson, James Wylie, Steve Snyder."

Dr. Roberts made a face. "The men who killed their wives. Yeah, I did autopsies on the wives and tox screens on the perps. Two-for-one special."

"Tox screens, that's perfect," Dean said. "Doc, I'm here because we've had a couple other cases that were similar, and I wanted to check and see how your results matched up."

"Well, COD on the wives was pretty clear, nothing weird in their systems at all, and the men didn't have anything either."

"Nothing at all?" Dean prodded.

"Well, I mean, I thought it was strange that they all had elevated hormone levels, but that's about it." She grimaced.

"Hormones, you mean like oxytocin?"

"Yeah," Dr. Roberts agreed. "Crazy high. All ready to go get a new lover's name tattooed into their chests, except they'd all been married for years." She shrugged and smirked. "Guess getting arrested saved them the tattoo removal."

Dean chuckled. "Well, congrats, Doc, sounds like you've got the the same thing, all right. That's the marker in our other cases too. So I was wondering, do you still have any of the blood samples?"

"Yes," Dr. Roberts said, sounding a little confused.

"Could I possibly convince you to part with them? Or some of them? My partner and I would like to take them back to the central lab for a closer look." Really, even one vial of blood would probably do the job, if that was all he could pry loose; you didn't need much to coat the blade of a knife.

"Um," she said. "Could I see your badge again?"

Dean pulled it out and held it up for her scrutiny, perfectly confident; he'd been making fake IDs for years and hadn't had a small-towner catch one yet. She looked at it, and back at him, and he kept his face pleasant. After a second Dr. Roberts shrugged, a what-the-hell gesture. "Follow me, Agent Murdoch," she said, and stood.

* * *

Dean walked back to the motel in the dusk. Christmas lights blinked on storefronts and in windows, which was pretty even if he didn't care much about Christmas in general. But maybe he could drag Sam to Bobby's, do the turkey thing. Turkeys were easy, you just had to wrap them in tinfoil so they didn't dry out. After last year it might be nice to do Christmas somewhere that wasn't pay-by-the-week. And Bobby'd appreciate Sam's eggnog.

Back at the room he set the blood samples on the kitchenette table, wondering how long they were good for. Did siren poison go bad? If this didn't work they were gonna have to wait till the next poor schmuck got taken over, but at least they could probably spot him early, save his wife. Dean sighed and pulled his tie off.

He was almost done in the shower when he heard Sam unlocking the door.

"Hey, you're back early," he said over the rush of the water. "Got a lead?"

"No," Sam said. "There was some kind of fight, cops showed up. We're gonna have to try again tomorrow night."

"Well, that's just peachy. Wasn't a fight over a girl, was it? Because that might be a lead." Dean leaned over forward to finish rinsing his hair.

"One of the bouncers was pissed off about his pay," Sam said. "Hurry up in there, man."

Dean snorted, but reached for the faucet. "Hold your friggin' horses," he said as he twisted.

He dried his hair and got dressed before he left the bathroom because Sam wasn't six anymore; he could hold it for five minutes. Dean was kind of annoyed that Sam was still being a bitch about fake-Nick, so he dawdled a little. It turned out to be a good thing; toweling his hair in the bathroom meant he wasn't half-blinded with fabric over his head when he stepped into the main room and Sam hit him from the side.

"Crap!" Dean twisted enough that he staggered instead of falling, and dodged the knife that Sam swung at him by about an inch. "What—"

"You arrogant asshole," Sam snarled, weaving for another opening. "It was bad enough when you just thought you were in charge because you're older. Now, it's like every word you say comes straight from God." His face twisted into a sneer. "Angels, anyway."

_Well, fuck, _Dean thought calmly.

"Come on, Sam, do it for me," a voice Dean didn't recognize said. He glanced around to see a woman standing between the beds. She was tall and blond and looked like a combination of Jess and Ruby's first meatsuit, and Dean didn't have time to deal with her right now—and besides, she'd rather watch Sam doing her dirty work. "Pay him back for all the times he didn't listen to you."

The thing was, in a straight-up fight Sam could take him four times out of five; Sam had reach on him and he'd been built like a brick shithouse since even before the growth spurts. But Dean had always been better at wrestling. When Sam lunged again, Dean stepped inside the arc of his swing and grabbed his wrist, twisting, and wrapped his ankle around the back of Sam's. They went down with Dean on top. He managed to force Sam to drop the knife and knocked it out of reach. "I know you don't care right now, but she's making you do this," Dean said tightly. He got control of Sam's hands, lost it, got it back.

"_You're_ making me do this, you _dick_," Sam spat into the dull brown carpet.

Dean yanked his brother's arms into a position that wouldn't be painful unless Sam struggled and looked over at the siren. She looked uneasy. "Better run, bitch," he said. "I don't need old blood anymore, got a fresh source right here." He stared at her until she dropped her eyes.

"I'll wait for you, Sam," she said, and took a hesitant step in the direction of the door. "Come find me when he's dead and we can be together."

"She's lying," Dean told the back of Sam's head conversationally. Sam made a strangled sound of rage. The siren edged to the door and slipped through it.

The bonus was, Dean had put handcuffs in the pocket of his jeans that morning. Getting them out and onto Sam's wrist without letting his brother get free was tricky, but Dean managed, and hauled them both to their feet and back into the bathroom. Sam tried hard to bite him as he wrapped the handcuff chain around the sink's drainpipe and closed the other bracelet.

"I'll shout for the cops," Sam said as Dean backed carefully out of kicking range.

"No you won't," Dean said. "You can't kill me yourself if I'm in a cell." Sam bared his teeth.

Dean went over to the weapons bag, noting as he did that Sam had poured Dr. Roberts' blood samples down the kitchenette sink. He rummaged in the medkit for a second and came up with the plastic box.

He went back into the bathroom to find that Sam wasn't trying to get free yet; even in a blind rage Sam was willing to bide his time if it would give him an advantage. But he was still breathing hard, which turned out to be not a good thing when Dean clamped the rag down over his mouth and nose. "Hey Sammy, this smell like chloroform to you?" Dean asked, grinning.

Sam wasted some air mouthing, "It's ether, asshole," through the rag. He was going to feel like crap when he woke up, but Dean refused to risk giving his brother a brain bleed by hitting him on the head.

Dean held on until he was sure Sam was out, and then about thirty seconds longer, then sighed and went to get his bronze knife.

* * *

He took the precaution of moving his car out of the motel's parking lot, just in case Sam woke up, got loose and decided to inflict some property damage, but Dean didn't want to drive around in search of the siren; you could cover ground faster, but you couldn't check buildings or alleys as easily.

Walking, however, turned out to be not really productive. After an hour of trudging through the chilly dark, getting colder and colder, Dean turned in to a Gas n' Sip for a cup of coffee and something to snack on; he'd been planning to order food once he was out of the shower, thanks so much Sam.

As he paid for his chips and a wilted-looking hot dog, Dean wished gloomily that Cas was around. He could probably track the siren in no time flat—and she needed to die, because otherwise Dean had no idea if Sam would ever go back to normal. On the other hand, it was a bad habit to get into, expecting Cas to be an angel on his shoulder; even if he wasn't busy saving seals, Cas probably had plenty of stuff he needed to get done and Dean couldn't afford to lose his edge by relying on the Easy Button all the time.

He walked out of the gas station with the coffee clutched in his hand and turned in the direction of the motel. Sam probably wasn't awake yet, but it was about time to check. He rounded the corner and nearly walked right into Cas.

It took some juggling to save the coffee and he almost missed the "Hello, Dean." Once Dean was sure he wasn't going to drop anything he looked up and found Cas was smiling at him, a little broader than usual.

"Dude, we have had the personal space talk," Dean said, but without any real heat in it.

"I apologize," Cas said, still smiling.

"What are you doing here? Did I—crap, Cas, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call you."

"It's fine," Cas said. "Where are you going?"

"Back to the motel, gotta check on Sammy." He tore a bite off the hot dog, which at least tasted better than it looked, and went on, "Dunno where you guys were getting your intel, but it's not a shapeshifter. It's a siren, and it got Sam."

Cas looked serious. "You'll have to kill it. There's no cure for siren venom."

"You can't, you know?" Dean asked, wiggling his fingers.

"I've never tried," Cas said.

Dean shrugged. "Well. Gotta find it first. Speaking of which, it'd be a big help if you could track it for me?"

"I can try, but sirens are hard to pin down," Cas said. "They change so easily, reflecting the desires of their prey."

"Figures," Dean said, and took a swallow of his coffee.

"Can I try that?" Castiel asked abruptly.

Dean checked for half a step and looked down at the cup. "Uh. Sure, if you want." He held the cup out. "You're not gonna like it though."

"Why do you say that?" Cas took the cup.

"Because coffee's gross and I drink it black."

"People usually put sugar in to fix that," Cas said.

"One, how would you know what people usually do? Two, dude, you put stuff in the coffee you end up with _more_ coffee."

"Yet you drink it anyway."

Dean shrugged. "It has caffeine in it."

Castiel eyed the cup, and then shrugged and drank some of its contents. His face screwed up and he made the universal _eww this is nasty_ motion of his jaw, and thrust the cup in Dean's direction. "You're right, that's horrible," he said.

Dean tried not to gape, but something must have shown in his face because Cas asked, "Is something wrong?"

"It doesn't taste like molecules?" Dean said. He took the coffee back mechanically.

He didn't think he was imagining the tiny pause before Cas replied, "Very unpleasant molecules."

"I warned you," Dean said, forcing his voice to be casual. "So hey, been a while."

"I'm sorry," said the thing that looked like Castiel. "My duties are pressing."

"No, I get that," Dean said. "But you know. If you have the time, Sam can wait a couple minutes?" He cut his eyes in the direction of the alley halfway up the block, a gesture Cas wouldn't have gotten even in Purgatory, let alone Castiel now, angel-of-the-Lord Castiel who didn't understand how to tell a white lie to make someone feel better.

The fake Cas, however, smiled. "If you're sure Sam will be all right," it said.

Dean manufactured a dirty smirk. "Sam's a big boy," he said, and jerked his chin at the alley. "C'mon, this is something for my bucket list."

He didn't manage to make the siren walk into the alley ahead of him, but once they were off the street Dean messed around setting down his bag of chips, managing to make it look like an accident when he spilled the coffee. "Damn," he said. "Well, wasn't much left anyway." He used the fidgeting to get a hand on the hilt of his knife, tucked away in his jacket with a plastic bag wrapped around it to keep the blood from wearing off.

Fake-Cas leaned against the blank wall, its smile still lingering. It looked wrong on Cas's face; Cas never smiled for more than a few seconds. Dean stood, both his hands tucked under his coat as if to ward off the cold, and turned. "So how you wanna do this?"

The siren shrugged, its shoulders loose in a way Dean had only ever seen on the junkie burn-out in the future Zachariah had sent him to. "I'm flexible," it said. "What are you in the mood for?"

Dean took a step in, and then another; he was nose-to-nose with the fake angel and he tilted his head like he was going in for a kiss. The siren's smile widened. "I'm thinking _fast_," Dean said, and brought the knife out, letting himself fall towards the siren so his weight would be behind the blow. Fake Cas had just enough time to begin to be alarmed before the knife went in. Dean grabbed it by the shoulder as it stiffened and choked.

"Your big mistake was picking him," Dean said casually, and drove the blade up.

* * *

"Oh God, I feel like crap," Sam said mournfully, from where he was hunched near the toilet.

"Sorry, dude," Dean said, from his out-of-hurling-range distance on the other side of the door. "We don't have anything else that I wouldn't've had to stuff down your throat." Ether was effective and all, but it left a hell of a hangover.

"I know. That doesn't make this suck less."

Dean hesitated. "I am sorry."

Sam turned his head just enough to free one eye from the hair. "You know it was the siren, man," he said. "I'm not pissed."

Dean wasn't sure that was true, but he was willing to pretend if Sam was. He sighed and leaned on the doorframe. "Pretty soon we're gonna...things will start changing. Things are already changing, but I mean even little things. It's that, what do you call it, butterfly effect."

"I kind of like knowing what's gonna go wrong. We save more people that way," Sam said. He sounded hoarse and miserable, but at least he sounded like himself. "Hey, what'd the siren look like for you?"

Dean grinned at him. "Tall leggy brunette," he said. "It was pretty awesome. Just didn't act right, I guess."

"Good thing for us," Sam said.

* * *

It took Sam dragging him into a used book store, a week or so after New Year's, before Dean remembered about Chuck, and even that was only because he wandered away from where Sam was drooling over a Latin dictionary into the interesting books. The spine caught his eye, yellow shock-font letters on black, _Croatoan_.

"Sonofabitch," Dean said, loud enough that the woman browsing the hardcover Star Treks a few shelves down glanced at him with her eyebrows raised. Snatching the book off the shelf, he shrugged at her as he turned.

He hurried over to Sam and grabbed the Latin book out of his hands. "Hey!" Sam protested, but Dean put his hand on his brother's head and forced him to look down, and Sam's next words died on his lips as he took in the title.

"We need to go to Ohio," Dean said grimly, as Sam turned the book over to read the blurb on the back.

* * *

"You're sure this is the place?" Sam asked as they stood on the sidewalk. Dean had to admit, the house looked kind of run-down, though at least this time no one had exploded in it. Yet.

"Yeah," he said.

"If he's making money off our lives, he sure isn't making very much," Sam said.

"Would you want to read about the crap that happens to us?" Dean asked.

"People read Stephen King, and look what he does to his characters."

"Point. Come on, let's get this done."

Sam trailed him up the porch steps. Dean rang the bell and they waited.

A minute later, Dean rang again. Nothing. He huffed a sigh and leaned on the button. They listened to the annoying ding-dong for a while longer.

Finally, from inside, someone snapped, "What? What do you want?" The door was yanked open and there stood Chuck— who was wearing the same bathrobe, and possibly the same boxer shorts, as the first time Dean had seen him, which, eww.

"What?" Chuck demanded again, frowning up at them. He looked like they'd just woken him up, possibly from being passed out, even though it was three in the afternoon.

"Hi there," Dean said with his widest, least sincere smile. "My name's Dean Winchester, and this is my brother Sam."

Chuck made a bitch-face that probably would have impressed someone who hadn't grown up with Sam and said, "Look, guys, that's very flattering and all but I was right in the middle of hold on a second." Chuck's face screwed up into confusion, and yeah, that was a hangover all right, Dean knew the look. "Wait, did you say Dean _Winchester_?"

"Yup," Dean said. "Can we come in?" He didn't wait for an answer, and it wasn't like Chuck was in any shape to stop him. Sam, of course, politely closed the door behind himself.

"That wasn't in the books," Chuck said, sounding baffled. "I never told anybody about that. I never even wrote that down." He didn't follow them down the hall; he had the look of a guy who was devoting too much energy to thinking to make his legs work.

"You didn't have to write it down for us to know our own name," Dean said, and snapped his fingers. "Chuck!" The author jumped and started moving.

"Wait, no, you're not...you can't!"

"We are, and we can," Sam said in his Serious Business voice, as Chuck stopped in front of him. He peered up at Sam like looking at things was painful and then frowned and turned away. They watched in silence as he wavered over to a table and picked up a bottle of whiskey and a glass that sat next to an open laptop. Dean could feel Sam's eyebrows rising as Chuck poured himself a double, paused and made it a triple, and then downed it in one long swallow. The writer set bottle and glass down with twin thuds and then turned back to them.

His eyes were closed. After a second he opened one and winced. "You're still there," he said, resigned.

"Yup," Dean said.

"I'm not hallucinating."

"Nope."

Chuck nodded. "Well, obviously there's only one possible explanation." He kept nodding, in a way that suggested he'd forgotten to stop, as he collapsed into his chair. "I'm a god."

"You're—not a god," said Sam.

"I am! I write things and they happen, how else do you explain it? I'm a cruel, capricious god." Chuck pressed a hand to his forehead. "The things I put you through. The physical beatings alone."

"Uh, Chuck," Dean said, but the writer ignored him. "I killed your father. I burned your mother. I burned Jessica, and for what? Literary symmetry!"

"Chuck," Dean tried, louder.

"I toyed with your lives and emotions, for _entertainment_."

"Chuck, you didn't create us," Sam said.

Chuck took his hand off his head and looked straight at Sam. "Did you have to live through the bugs?" Sam nodded, and Chuck went on, "How about the ghost ship?" Another nod. "I am so sorry. Horror, OK, but living through writing that bad—I swear, if I'd known it was real I woulda done another pass at least."

"Chuck, you are not a god!" Dean said.

"We think you're probably just psychic," Sam added. Dean had not filled him in on the whole prophet thing, since they weren't likely to be needing an archangel. The fewer people who knew Chuck was a prophet, the fewer who could let it slip—which was why Dean was here in the first place. He needed to know what Chuck knew about his own little trip from the future, and none of the published books would tell him that.

Chuck snorted at Sam and said, "Hell, no. You think I'd be writing for a living if I were psychic? Writing's _hard_."

"From the looks of things, you're just focused on us," Sam said.

"Yeah, so what are you working on right now?" Dean asked, to cut to the chase, and sure enough, Chuck sat up straight and said, "Holy crap." He picked up a stack of papers from the table and brandished it. "This is the latest manuscript and it's...kind of weird."

"Weird how?" Sam asked.

"Kind of Vonnegut."

"_Slaughterhouse Five_ Vonnegut or _Cat's Cradle_ Vonnegut?" Dean asked, and fought down a smirk when Sam blinked at him in surprise. He shrugged and Sam shook his head.

Chuck either missed the byplay or ignored it and said, "Kilgore Trout Vonnegut. I wrote myself into it. I wrote myself, at my house, confronted by my characters."

Sam blinked again and said, "Wow."

"Yeah," Chuck agreed. "I mean, it's not M.-Night-level douchiness, but authorial self-insert is serious navel gazing no matter how you cut it."

"So how does this psychic thing of yours work?" Dean said.

Chuck rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "I get a headache. Like, the worst headache you ever had. Aspirin does nothing, so I drink until I fall asleep. And then, well, the first time it happened I thought it was just a crazy dream. But I thought, I could write that. It was so much more coherent than most dreams, you know? And it...flows. It keeps flowing. I can't stop it. It's the easiest writing I've ever done and it's still so fricking hard."

The thing was, Dean knew the look Chuck was wearing now, too. This was a guy talking about his one thing, the one thing he knew he could do. It was what Bobby looked like when he talked about books, what Sam had looked like when he talked about going to college. Dean didn't know what made it happen on his face, but he knew there had to be something.

"OK, look," he said. Chuck's posture stiffened. "This thing you do, it's a little...weird for us, right? Like, there's this whole world of people who know everything about three years of our lives. There are those slash fan people."

Sam grimaced. He'd insisted on looking up the book series before they got here, and wouldn't listen when Dean told him he wasn't gonna like what he found.

"Yeah, that's kind of a thing that happens these days?" Chuck said. "You should see some of the stuff people write about the Lord of the Rings movies." He shuddered. "Orc porn." Dean had in fact seen those movies, and the image was nasty.

"Chuck," Sam said, "would you mind if we took a look at some of the things you've written recently?"

* * *

"_Look, I'm not gonna...the only thing you need to know about Hell is, when you're there, every day, they make you an offer." Dean felt like he was going to choke on the words. He didn't want Bobby and his brother to hear this. They should never have to know—but they did have to know; Dean had no choice. "They...at the end of the day, you get a choice. You can stay where you are, or you can get down off the rack. But if you do, you have to do to someone else what the demons were doing to you."_

_Sam made a noise that was suspiciously like a sob. Speaking as kindly as Bobby ever did, the old man said, "No one could blame you for—"_

"_I didn't...I didn't. But I would have." Dean took another sip of his whiskey for strength._

"_You don't know that," Sam argued hotly._

"_I do know," Dean insisted. He made himself meet his brother's eyes. "Sammy, I know I couldn't have held out forever. Even knowing what I knew."_

_Bobby slammed his glass down onto the desk, heedless of the slosh of the whiskey, and snapped, "Damnit, Dean, you keep sayin' things that raise more questions than they answer. What did you know?"_

"_Al—the demon who had me—he wasn't always as careful as he should have been," Dean explained. He couldn't believe he'd almost said Alastair's name. It was sloppy. "Sometimes he let other demons watch. And I heard a couple of 'em talking." He closed his eyes and quoted, "The first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in Hell. As he breaks, so shall it break."_

"_A righteous man?" Sam asked._

_Dean gave his brother a lopsided smile. "Yeah, I know, but it's a thing. I'm the righteous man, whatever, just go with it."_

"_Actually," Sam responded, smiling in return, "I was thinking it was a pretty good description."_

Dean looked up from the paper to find Chuck staring at him from his chair, where he was working his way through a beer. The writer had a weird expression on his face, kind of hopeful. Dean said slowly, "This isn't, um, this isn't exactly how that talk went."

"Yeah," Chuck said, a little too casual. "I, uh, sometimes I edit? A little? You know, punch it up some. Or when a character seems to know a little too much too soon, I kind of tone it down." He raised his eyebrows. It was one of the worst attempts at being subtle Dean had ever seen, and he'd tried to teach _Cas _to lie. "I mean, if I don't write it...I have to write what I see. But I can edit later. If you know what I mean."

Dean glanced at Sam, beside him on the couch, and then back at the writer, and smiled, a slow, real smile. "Yeah, dude, I think I do."

* * *

It was sort of on the way, so they stopped at the Sandover building on the way to Minnesota. Fortunately, no one really hung out in the little hallway that the shrine to PT Sandover was in, and they got away clean. And Dean didn't have to spend any time driving a Prius, wearing suspenders, or talking to Zach, so as far as he was concerned that was fantastic.

Sam spent the entire time they were in Windom bitching. About Dad, mostly. Dean just set his teeth and tried to remind himself that this was the first time Sam had heard about Adam. He didn't want to go over the arguments again, so he just let Sam bitch. The ghouls were living in the same cemetery, though, so that made it pretty easy.

* * *

"We should let them know that Dad's dead," Sam said. They were parked down the block from Kate Milligan's house.

"Yeah," Dean said. "It's gonna suck, though."

"Yeah," Sam echoed him. They just sat there for a few more seconds, and then Sam sighed and opened his door.

The talk with the Milligans went about as well as Dean expected, so when they got back to their motel and Castiel was there, he was ridiculously relieved. A job was just the thing to take his mind off the look on his other little brother's face when he found out his dad was dead.

* * *

It wasn't a surprise to hear Dean's voice; since the night they'd talked after Dean's nightmare, he had taken to praying—at random, as far as Castiel could tell. _Castiel, you should be here, this is a great burger_ or _Gonna put more Nair in Sam's shampoo if he doesn't get a move on, Cas, I swear_ or _Just missed a coyote in the road, looked to me like he was pissed._ Castiel supposed it should have been annoying, but he found it...amusing. Endearing, perhaps, though he couldn't imagine why.

What was surprising was the tone of the prayer. _Cas, shit, we need some help __**right the fuck now**_, and Dean sounded genuinely frantic.

"My apologies, I must go," Castiel said.

From the other side of the table Zachariah had insisted they take in the little restaurant, his superior raised her eyebrows.

"Dean," Castiel said. Had he been speaking to anyone else he would have been gone already.

"Oh," Zachariah said and waved her hand. The waiter hurried toward the table. "There will be time for that when you've finished your report."

Castiel paused on the edge of flight, taken aback. "I believe he needs help," he explained.

As the waiter poured tea, Zachariah smiled. "Dean's a big boy," she said calmly. "He and his abomination of a brother can take care of themselves for a few more minutes. Now sit down and finish your report."

It took a moment for Castiel to force himself to obey.

* * *

They made it back to the room on the last dregs of adrenaline and Dean's absolute refusal to collapse anywhere he couldn't secure, staggering across the parking lot leaning on each other like a pair of drunks after last call. Sam, who was slightly better off, managed the keys and dropped Dean on his bed. Dean wanted to fall over on his back but he knew if he did it his shoulder would go from grumbling to screaming so he stayed sitting up straight.

"Screw this angel job crap," he said, with all the venom he could muster—not much, he had to admit, he was running on the _memory_ of fumes. "Frickin' angels, don't even come help us out when it's their frickin' job we're doing." Even he could tell he sounded like he was about to pass out, an activity that was hardly off the table. Sam dragged himself around and put his hands on Dean's shoulder. "You want something to bite on?" he asked.

"No, just do _shit!" _ Dean's last word turned into a yell as Sam yanked, resettling the dislocation. It wasn't as easy as it would have been before Cas fixed everything, and that only made it hurt more. By the time Dean's vision cleared Sam had shuffled into the bathroom. Dean turned just enough that he could see Sam leaning on the sink to examine his latest interesting head wound in the mirror. Sam looked like an escapee from a zombie movie; scalp wounds always bled like a bitch anyway and Dean was convinced Sam had it worse because of the blood supply he needed to support all that hair.

Sam sighed as he tried to angle his head so he could see the top of it. "I know you like him, but sometimes I swear it's like Castiel is _trying_ to get us killed," he said.

"What do you mean I like him?" Dean asked, trying to figure out how to get his shirt off without moving his arm.

"You guys were friends in the future, right?" Sam said. He parted his hair carefully. "I don't think we need to try to stitch this."

"You just don't want me to shave your head," Dean said. "But yeah, Cas and I were friends. You and him were friends too."

Sam snorted. "Yeah, he treats me like a leper," he said. "But the way you two look at each other, sometimes I feel like asking if you need to get a room."

Dean knew perfectly well that Sam was just trying to distract him from the insistent pain of the bad shoulder, but it was easy to fall into the familiar give-and-take, and anyway he kind of wanted to be distracted. "I'm not into churchy types. Too much effort." Something was annoying him, though, and it took a second of sifting through his pain-slow thoughts to figure out what it was. "Why would Cas try to get us killed?" he asked, watching Sam press a damp washcloth to his head with a wince.

"Oh, come on, he wouldn't really," Sam said. "Not after all the trouble they went to to get...you…"

Slowly, Sam turned his head to meet Dean's eyes and Dean watched his brother get the look, the look that meant Sam had just figured it out and it wasn't good, and a second or so later he realized.

"Dean," Sam said urgently, "you said the angels knew. You said they wanted it."

Dean nodded, feeling gut-punched.

* * *

When Castiel arrived, Zachariah was standing at the very edge of the cliff so that the toes of her shoes were actually protruding into empty air. "They've always wanted to see this," she said as Castiel materialized beside her.

"Who?" Castiel asked. He suspected he knew, but if he did not ask she would be irritated and the meeting would not go as well; long experience had taught him that Zachariah expected her rhetorical flourishes to be indulged.

She didn't look at him as she replied, "The Winchesters. They go to Las Vegas to pander to Dean's lust and gluttony, and they whine about not having time for the finer things, but they never just drive the extra two hundred fifty miles to see it. Hael did a fine job, don't you think?"

Castiel looked out over the canyon. The stark, multicolored stone glowed richly in the morning light, casting dramatic shadows wherever there was an outcropping. It was not perhaps the most spectacular natural formation he had ever seen, but it was beautiful, and he said sincerely, "Yes."

Zachariah nodded and was silent. Castiel set himself to wait until his superior should tell him why she'd summoned him. Finally, she said, "Castiel, I have a task for you."

"For me?" Castiel repeated. Usually Zachariah said she had a new assignment for the Winchesters, and he did not understand what good that would do, now that Dean had so vehemently refused to aid Heaven further.

Zachariah nodded again and turned away from the vista of the canyon to face him. A stone, nudged by her foot, skittered over the edge of the cliff and fell, bouncing from the canyon wall. "You aren't gonna like it," she said, and smirked in a way that made her vessel's attractive features into something petty and mean.

"I...have no need to like my orders," Castiel said, unsure of the response she wanted.

"Good!" she said heartily. "That's what I like to hear. Go find Dean Winchester, kill him, and take his soul back to Hell."

For a long moment, Castiel was so shocked he could only grope for a reply. "He's done nothing wrong," he exclaimed at last.

Zachariah's face twisted further, an expression of furious spite that Castiel wanted to flinch back from. "He has defied the will of Heaven," she snarled.

"Dean is a good man," Castiel said urgently. "I can't believe that his defiance is grounds for prematurely condemning him to Hell. He should be judged at the natural end of his life, like any other human."

Zachariah's face smoothed out and she pursed her lips. "If I didn't know better," she said thoughtfully, "I would think that you were questioning my orders." She looked up into the brilliant morning sun, needlessly squinting her eyes. "Are you questioning my orders, Castiel?"

"No, I—of course not," Castiel stumbled out, even as cold fear washed over his Grace. He did not want to go to the Guides; those who returned from that process were always _changed_, and in his opinion rarely for the better.

"Good," Zachariah said with an unlovely smile.

"But...he'll break the seal," Castiel said, feeling on firmer ground with this argument. "Returning him to Hell will guarantee that. He withstood so much, we can't expect him to be strong forever."

Zachariah's smile widened. "Castiel...I'm gonna let you in on a little secret," she said.

* * *

"You have a destiny," Castiel said from behind him, and Dean whirled, reaching reflexively for a gun he wasn't carrying that wouldn't have done any good anyway. The refrigerator door shut with a quiet _thunk_, pushed by his movement.

Castiel stood in the arch to the living room. He had a look on his face that Dean didn't like, that carefully blank face that Cas only did when he was being Castiel, Angel of the Lord, Acting Under Orders. Dean had relaxed, automatically, when he'd seen it was just Cas, but his gut told him he'd better tense up again.

"Castiel," he said. "You scared the hell out of me."

Castiel did not quite flinch at the word "hell", and the bad feeling got worse. Way, way worse.

"My apologies," said Castiel. For all his expressionless face, he sounded unhappy.

"No problem," Dean said. He turned and opened the fridge again, against every instinct telling him that putting his back to Castiel was _danger_. It wasn't like facing the angel was going to help, if Cas decided to do something. "Whatcha got?" Dean asked, forcing his voice to be calm. "I thought I told your boss that I'm not interested in whatever she's got on the hook. No offense, but if I never see an angel again I'll be freakin' ecstatic." It wasn't true—Dean missed the Cas he'd left behind in the future, and even this Cas had become something he thought he could call a friend—but it was close enough.

Castiel was quiet long enough for Dean to collect the makings of a sandwich and dump them on the counter. He reached for the breadbox and pulled out a loaf, some crazy-expensive locally-baked thing that was a prime example of why Bobby and Dean didn't let Sam go for groceries on his own if they could help it. Dean picked up the bread knife and set it against the loaf, and for some reason it was looking at that, at his hands holding a knife and ready to cut into something, that broke his nerve.

"Are you here to take me back to Hell?" Dean asked quietly.

* * *

Shocked, Castiel found he couldn't answer immediately, and by the time he regained the power of speech he knew his silence had been answer enough. Dean nodded and turned away from his food to look across the kitchen. Castiel felt his gaze stutter away. "It's fate," he said helplessly.

Dean snorted and replied, "It's the Apocalypse."

That was startling too, and Castiel found himself able to meet Dean's eyes. They were wide with apprehension and he was going pale even as Castiel watched, but he shrugged. "I've already seen how this goes," he said, his voice steady despite the fear Castiel could hear in it.

"You're not a prophet," Castiel protested.

With a bitter smile, Dean said, "Never said I was."

"Then how-"

"You got me," Dean said. He leaned back against the counter and set his hands on the edge, still holding the bread knife. "All I know is, I was...actually, now I think about it, it was 2014, that's kind of funny." Castiel didn't see why Dean would find it amusing, but decided it was irrelevant when the man continued, "I died. But instead of whatever was supposed to happen, I woke up back in Hell. Right before I broke the seal."

Castiel knew he should speak-knew he should _act_, that letting Dean talk was not part of his orders-but he couldn't. He was too busy examining every interaction he'd ever had with Dean in light of this new revelation, and finding that it made many things make sense. And besides, it felt as if this were the least he could do, letting the condemned man have these last few moments. Dean drew a deep breath and went on.

"We stopped it, the first time, but Sam-" He paused and looked up at the ceiling. "Sam had to let Lucifer in. Spent eighteen months in the Cage getting pulled apart by the Devil as his thanks for saving the world. If it was just me, Cas…" Dean looked at him again and cleared his throat. "I can't let that happen to Sammy again, it almost killed me last time. And that wasn't even all. It screwed you over too."

"What do you mean?" Castiel said. He probably should have been more startled, but his capacity for surprise was getting more strained by the second.

Dean made an expression that was probably supposed to be a smile and said, "We were friends, Cas. You tried to help us, and every time it got _worse_. While we were trying to stop the Apocalypse, you ended up practically human." He said the last two words almost as if he were quoting someone else, but Castiel didn't have time to consider it as he continued. "Then you got juiced up again, except one of the other angels tried to restart the Apocalypse train and you had to start a full-on _war_ to stop it. You made a deal with...a deal you shouldn't've made, you tried to make new souls to power yourself up, in the end you pulled so much power you went nuts and declared yourself God, and when you came back from that one you spent a couple months nutty as a goddamn fruitcake. I gotta actually _think about it_ to remember how many times you _died_ for me."

"This is ridiculous," Castiel said, with a swell of anger. "I would never call myself God. That is the worst kind of blasphemy."

"Look me in the eye," Dean said steadily, "and tell me that I'm lying to you."

* * *

Six years in, Dean still wasn't sure how much Cas could actually read his mind, so he just let the angel stare at him. After a long time, Castiel dropped his eyes, nodding, and when he looked back up at Dean his expression was full of sadness. Dean's stomach twisted. "I believe you, Dean," Castiel said. "But you have to know that it doesn't change anything."

"Right, right," Dean said, wishing for a drink. "Gotta toe the company line." He sighed and clutched the bread knife harder, like he had a chance in the world of defending himself with it.

"I'm sorry it has to be like this," Castiel said. He sounded actually sincere, and Dean remembered yelling, and punching, and finally flat-out pleading, and it had worked, but that had been _Cas_ and this was Castiel, and he just didn't know what to do. Oblivious, Castiel went on, "But it's long foretold. It will be terrible for a little while, but when it's over, you'll be at peace. Sam will be with you, Dean."

"Damn it, how many times do I have to have this conversation?" Dean said, though he wanted to sound angry and instead it just came out tired. "We don't want your goddamn Stepford paradise. We just want to live our lives the way they are. No destiny, no fate, nothing fricking _foretold_, OK? All we need is free will, and if that means we have to go through the pain and the guilt to get it, we will. It's _that simple_." He stared into Castiel's face, trying to beam out his sincerity like Professor X. "There's a right and a wrong here, Cas, and you know it. This isn't about being a good soldier. This is about doing the right thing."

Castiel didn't look away, and for a long second Dean thought he had him, that he'd found the magic combination of words, but then Castiel's stolen eyes closed like he was in pain, and when they opened the angel mask had settled over him again.

"I have my orders," Castiel said.

_You spineless, soulless son of a bitch_, Dean thought, but the thing was, he knew it wasn't true—hell, he'd known it wasn't true the first time, and that had been what made him so pissed. Cas's problem had always been that he cared too much about people. Castiel squared his shoulders and took a step across the kitchen, then another, and in the second before his fingers touched Dean's forehead, Dean blurted, "Will you stay?"

"What?" Castiel said. He looked so confused Dean would have thought it was funny in other circumstances, and his hand dropped to his side.

Dean took a deep breath. "Alastair always said no one could hear me," he said, lowering his voice automatically. "He said no one cared if I screamed. I just—I dunno how long I'm—it's not just the seal, I...I don't want to be that again, Cas. I don't want to be his knife." He paused to breathe again, shaky. Castiel was still as a statue. "I think I can hold out for a while if I know someone can hear me."

Awful silence stretched between them.

Finally Castiel moved again, and Dean couldn't stop his eyes slamming shut because he didn't want to see it coming. But instead of fingers on his forehead, he felt Castiel's hand spread over his breastbone and a shock went through him and he gasped.

When Dean opened his eyes again Castiel looked determined and grim, and Dean had seen that look before too, more times than he wanted to remember. This one was the look Cas always got when he was about to throw himself on the grenade, the stupid son of a bitch. "Stay close to your brother," Castiel said. "You're hidden from us now and you'll protect him too as long as you're within a mile or so. You should leave here as soon as you can." He looked to the side and back. "Just so you understand, I won't be able to help you any more than this. If you see me again, I...won't be your friend."

Dean nodded, trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened.

* * *

Dean appeared to be stunned, and Castiel supposed he couldn't be blamed; he was hardly party to Castiel's thoughts. Nor did Castiel particularly want him to be, as they were full of the unpleasant consequences of what Castiel had just done.

But there was no point in putting it off. "Goodbye, Dean," Castiel said, and prepared himself to leave, but before he could Dean grabbed his arm. It didn't hinder his flight in any way, but Castiel found himself disinclined to break the contact.

"Cas, wait—what do you mean, _if_ I see you again?" Dean looked concerned, and Castiel took a moment to consider how to phrase this. He did not want to cause Dean any more guilt.

"When I return to Heaven, I'll be asked what happened," Castiel said. Dean nodded. "They won't be pleased when I tell them."

"So don't tell them," Dean said, in a tone that suggested it was the only logical course. "Say Sam and me left, you can't find—except you can't lie for crap, nevermind." He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and considered. Castiel stayed, and let him. He didn't know what he expected Dean to accomplish that would mitigate Castiel's disobedience, but at this point it hardly mattered; one way or the other the best Castiel could expect was death. He thought it more likely that he would spend a long, long time with the Guides, being set back on the proper path. He was selfishly grateful for any excuse to take a few more moments before that process would begin.

Finally, Dean said, "OK, here's what we're going to do. When you tell this story, you're going to tell it just like it happened, right up till you said you had orders and came over to take me. OK?" Perplexed, Castiel nodded. "Now say it again."

Castiel tilted his head in confusion and Dean prompted, "Say 'I have my orders'."

After a moment, Castiel said slowly, "I have my orders." Then, because it seemed like the proper thing to do, he raised his vessel's hand again and Dean flinched back from it.

"Please," he said, "please just give me enough time to write Sam a note." He sounded afraid again, and Castiel did not like it, but when he hesitated Dean raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Castiel nodded. He was beginning to understand what Dean was doing, taking him through the actions so that he could honestly recount what had happened, but he still didn't know what advantage Dean hoped to gain from it. Acting as if Castiel intended to take him to Hell would do no good unless he actually did it.

Dean moved away, toward Bobby's desk. "I can't let him come back here and not know what happened," he said, as if to himself, leaning over the desk for paper and a pen. "I'll write fast, I swear, I just need to leave him something." He bent over his tools. Castiel waited quietly.

When Dean turned, Castiel saw blood trickling down the wrist of the hand that held one of Bobby's books, smeared with more blood. Dean never had put down the bread knife, Castiel realized, just as Dean said, "I'm sorry about this, Cas," and slapped his other hand down in the center of the banishing sigil.

Castiel's Grace screamed in protest as the light swept him away.

* * *

Dean was pulling his phone out of his pocket before Cas was even all the way gone, punching the speed dial as he headed for the stairs. Sam picked up as Dean slammed into the spare bedroom. "What's up?"

"Where are you?" Dean demanded, grabbing his duffel from under his bed. Luckily they hadn't unpacked much. Sam sometimes put things in the dresser drawers, but this time the only things missing were bathroom stuff like toothbrushes.

"We're on our way back," Sam said. He'd picked up on Dean's mood because his tone was all business. "What's wrong?"

"Cas came to see me," Dean said. He used the nickname deliberately, in case saying his whole name got the angel's attention. "Sammy, we have to run."

"What?"

"I'll explain when you get here," Dean said grimly.

There was a pause, and then Sam said, "Ten minutes," and hung up.

By the time Sam and Bobby rattled into the scrap yard, Dean had the Impala packed. He relaxed a little when he could see Sam, knowing for sure he was within range of Dean's protective rib carvings, but only a little because the angels knew where Bobby's place was and he had no clear idea of how long the sigil would keep Cas gone.

Bobby swung out of the truck in unison with Sam, barking, "What in the _hell_ is going on?"

"Zach sent Cas to take me back to Hell," Dean said briefly. "I talked him out of it, but I don't know if he's gonna be able to convince them I got the drop on him. Cas ain't a good liar." Bobby and Sam stared in surprise and Dean snapped, "We don't have time! Me and Sam need to get gone before they send someone else. Here." He shoved a paper in Bobby's direction. Bobby reached for it on reflex. "Paint those on the house, they'll keep the feathery dicks out."

* * *

Three days later in an empty barn—and wasn't that a laugh—in rural Georgia, Sam said, "I don't know if this is a good idea."

"I think it's the best we have," Dean said.

"That's not saying much. Dean, we ought to be hiding."

"We ought to be in Yemen," Dean said, feeling a pang of nostalgia for a time when his biggest problem had been the FBI on his tail.

Sam snorted. "Look how well that worked out last time."

"We don't have to let him out if he's brainwashed," Dean said.

Sam bit his lip and said, "I'm not sure how you think we're going to tell. He's not big on...expressions."

"I can tell," Dean said.

"Dean—"

"I can tell, Sam." He just hoped it was true, because God knew Cas had managed to fool him for a year working with Crowley. But this Cas hadn't learned to lie yet.

Sam blew out his breath and said, "OK. But you better be sure about this."

Instead of answering, Dean struck the match and dropped it into the bowl. The contents flared up like fireworks.

"How long is this going to take?" Sam asked.

"Not very long," Castiel's voice said, and Dean looked up from the summoning setup to find the angel standing right in the middle of the diagram. His fingers worked on automatic, striking another match and dropping it, even as he knew that it was too late, if Cas was turned Dean was so dead. But Cas didn't move as the match fell to the circle of holy oil and it caught.

As the flames met behind him Cas said, "You shouldn't have called me, Dean."

In the corner of Dean's eye Sam tensed up. Dean said, "I had to know." He paused and made himself meet Cas's eyes. "I just want to know if you're OK."

Cas looked down for just a second, and Dean felt a stab of fear, but when Cas looked up again there was emotion clear on his face. "They believed me," he said. "But Dean, Heaven—it wasn't right that I was asked to do that. Heaven is corrupt." His eyes were shadowed and Dean could see the hurt in them.

"I know," Dean said. At his shoulder Sam shifted uncomfortably. "What we need is a way to make sure Lucifer can't ever get out, right?" Castiel nodded, looking sad and determined. "So we have to deal with Lilith. From what we read, if we kill her before the first seal breaks, it screws up the magic, right? So that's all we need to do."

"Lilith is very powerful," Castiel said. "I don't know if I can kill her, Dean." It looked like it about killed _him _to admit it.

"You don't have to, not alone," Sam said unexpectedly. "We'll find a way. All of us working together, we can do it."

Dean was pretty sure Cas would have been biting his lip if he was human, and he said impulsively, "Cas, you don't have to. Just...go back to Heaven, pretend to look for us when they tell you to, it'll be OK. We can do it. If you feel like you can't help. It's OK."

Cas let out a long breath that wasn't quite a sigh and said, "I don't know how long I can avoid suspicion. And I can't—" He cut himself off but Dean was pretty sure he could fill in that blank. Cas had never been any good at being alone. "I want to help you," Cas said, and his chin came up.

Dean stared into Cas's eyes, and Cas looked steadily back. "Are you sure about this, Cas? I told you it went bad for you."

"I'm sure," Castiel said firmly. "Dean—in Hell. I could always hear you."

No one said anything for a beat; Dean could feel Sam staring at him. He swallowed, and it took another second before he could make words. "Put the fire out, Sam," he said. There was only the tiniest bit of a pause before Sam poured his bucket of sand over a section of the flaming circle.

"Can you hide Sam?" Dean said. "So we don't have to stay close together all the time?"

Cas nodded and stepped out of the circle. He put his hand on Sam's chest and Sam yelped. "My apologies," Cas said.

"That's OK," Sam said, rubbing at his breastbone.

Dean felt a smile start to spread over his face. "Check it out," he said. "Team Free Will is back together." Sam and Cas gave him identical confused expressions and he fought down a laugh. "Don't worry about it," he said, and took a deep breath. "Well, OK. We've got work to do."

THE END

_Um. Yeah. I just want it known that I didn't intend to follow up one "character goes back in time and sets out to Fix Everything" fic with a second that has the exact same premise. But a couple weeks after posting last year's DCBB, someone sent me an email with a plot bunny and...well. :shrug:_

_At least this one is not quite as ridiculously born out of my id; I like Dean and his voice is easy, but he's not nestled comfortably in my subconscious the way Cas is._

_Zachariah's vessel, BTW, looks like Tricia Helfer as Six in the BSG reboot._

_Many thanks to my betareader, who is responsible for so many tweaks that I can't possibly name them all._


End file.
